American experts have embarked on experiments on anti-aging gene therapy. The treatment costs a million dollars. For this money, they promise to rejuvenate the body for 25 years. According to doctors, two patients - 79 and 90 years old - will have their first injections in the coming days. Earlier, a similar procedure was reported by geneticist Elisabeth Perish. True, many scientists consider her data dubious. RIA Novosti understands what the new methods of rejuvenation are based on and how effective they are.
Make cells divide forever
In 2012, Spanish researchers showed that gene therapy can prolong life - in laboratory mice in particular. Adults (12 months) and elderly (24 months) rodents were injected with a specially designed virus with an active telomerase gene. The virus inserted its DNA into animal cells and made them produce this enzyme.
The fact is that telomerase lengthens the terminal regions of chromosomes - telomeres, the size of which, according to some data, correlates with life expectancy. Normally, with each division, telomere cells decrease and when they become critically short, cells can no longer divide and repair tissue damage. As a result, the body is aging. The exception is sex and stem cells, which multiply much longer - precisely thanks to telomerase.
Spanish geneticists suggested that thanks to the enzyme, mice would live longer. And so it happened: the lifespan of one-year-old rodents, which were injected with an active telomerase gene, increased on average by 24 percent. Their two-year-old relatives lived 13 percent longer than their control peers after gene therapy. At the same time, in animals that received an active telomerase gene, neuromuscular coordination improved and the development of osteoporosis slowed down. Both indicators are considered markers of aging.
In addition, the experimental mice did not develop oncological diseases, although it is believed that telomerase is also responsible for the "immortality" of cancer cells.
Promotional video:
Graph showing how much the lifespan of mice increased in the experiment of Spanish scientists. A group of animals (21 individuals) injected with a virus (AAV9) containing an active telomerase gene (mTERT) is shown in black. In gray, rodents (12 individuals) that received the virus (AAV9) with green fluorescent protein (eGFP). It had no effect on cells. Animals (43 mice) that have not received any injections are marked in blue.
Retard aging
Scientists at the Houston Methodist Research Institute (USA) conducted successful experiments on gene therapy on human cell cultures, lengthening telomeres and thus slowing down the premature aging of cells taken from patients with progeria. In this disease, the work of the gene responsible for the production of the lamin protein, which is included in the membrane of the cell nucleus, is disrupted. DNA is less well repaired, telomeres are destroyed faster, and the body becomes decrepit. Patients with this diagnosis live no more than 13 years on average.
The patients took samples of fibroblasts - connective tissue cells - with shortened telomeres. And then three times with an interval of 48 hours were injected into them messenger RNA encoding human telomerase. As a result, fibroblasts continued to divide, and premature cellular aging slowed down. At the same time, scientists noticed that fibroblasts are rejuvenated - telomerase in them has become more active and telomeres are longer.
Check on man
In September 2015, the genetics of Elizabeth Parish, who heads the startup BioViva (USA), were injected intravenously with genetic constructs that activate telomerase and stimulate the synthesis of follistatin, a protein that affects muscle growth. This happened in a hospital in Colombia, its name and the name of the doctor who injected, were not disclosed.
Three years later, Parish said that her telomeres were significantly lengthened, and her body was rejuvenated by several years. But she never published the results of this experiment in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. The only indisputable result is that the researcher is alive and, judging by the analyzes, is feeling well.
Now the employees of Libella Gene Therapeutics intend to repeat Parish's experience. They registered a gene therapy clinical trial on the official US website clinicaltrials.gov. However, the research itself is going to be carried out in one of the Colombian hospitals, outside the jurisdiction of the American Ministry of Health - the FDA.
According to company representatives, the other day two patients - a 79-year-old man and a 90-year-old woman - will be injected with genetic constructs with an active telomerase gene. They promise to report the first results in a year.
The scientific community is very skeptical about these experiments. First, the study is not conducted in the United States - this may indicate that its authors want to avoid control by the authorities. Second, according to the latest data, telomere length as such correlates poorly with the lifespan of different mammalian species. Longevity rather depends on the rate at which telomeres are lost.
Therefore, some scientists propose to include in the genetic constructs used in such therapy, not an active telomerase gene, but genes associated with resistance to age-related diseases. For example, recently a research group at Harvard University (USA), using a cocktail of three such genes, cured elderly mice from obesity, type II diabetes, kidney and heart failure. As a result, the rodents lived longer than the animals from the control group.
Alfiya Enikeeva
