Immortality and eternal youth are people's eternal pursuit. Recently, libella gene therapeutics (hereinafter referred to as' libella '), an American company that studies gene therapy, announced that it has been approved by the institutional review board (IRB) to carry out paid clinical trials using gene therapy in Colombia (South America) in order to treat and eventually cure aging.
According to libella's payment model, test participants will register in their country of origin after paying $1 million. Participants will go to Colombia to sign informed consent and receive ribella gene therapy in a strictly controlled hospital environment.
Traditionally, aging has been regarded as a natural process. In the pursuit of youth, this view has quietly changed. Now, scientists believe that aging should be regarded as a disease. Research in this field has convinced people that the key to human aging is the shortening of our telomeres.
Let's first understand what telomeres are? Telomere is a special DNA sequence that acts as a 'hat' at both ends of each chromosome to provide a protection for your genes. Every time a cell divides, the telomeres become shorter. Eventually, the telomeres become too short to be shorter, and the cell will die. Therefore, telomeres are like a molecular clock, recording the age of cells.
Our cells have a special enzyme called telomerase, which can reconstruct telomeres. Cells with a lot of telomerase can live longer, while cells without telomerase will die faster. It is conceivable that discovering how all this works is a great scientific achievement, also for Elizabeth & middot; Blackburn, Carol & middot; Grad and Jack & middot; Szostak brought the Nobel Prize in 2009.
Human normal somatic cells do not express telomerase; It only exists in stem cells, which can replicate indefinitely and provide new somatic cells with long telomeres for tissues. This division between a few privileged stem cell populations and the vast majority of restricted somatic cells is how higher animal life forms keep cancer risk low enough to achieve evolutionary success. Obviously, humans are not satisfied with this, but evolution has never been about personal happiness.
Bill & middot, chief scientific officer of libella; Dr. bill Andrews has developed a gene therapy aimed at prolonging telomeres. In about 200 clinical trials, Andrew's gene therapy delivery system has been proved to be safe with minimal adverse reactions.
In the first phase of the trial, the safety and tolerance of gene therapy in about 5 participants will be evaluated. It is expected to be completed in 2021.
Andrews has appeared in popular science, today's show and many documentaries on prolonging life. As one of the main discoverers of RNA and protein components of human telomerase, Andrews was awarded the second place of "national inventor of the year" in 1997. In 1981, he received his doctorate in molecular and population genetics from the University of Georgia. He has held several senior scientific and technical positions in leading bioscience companies. Andrews is a well-known American inventor with more than 50 patents. He has also published many scientific research papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Libella involves a new gene therapy that uses adeno-associated virus as a vector to deliver telomerase reverse transcriptase to the human body in order to prolong telomeres. Libella believes that telomere elongation is the key to the treatment and cure of aging.
The clinical trial of libella has been published in the ClinicalTrials of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Gov database. Libella is the first and only gene therapy company in the world, and its clinical trials have been published in ClinicalTrials Gov, aimed at reversing aging.
Jeff & middot, President of libella, on why he decided to carry out the project outside the United States; Dr. Jeff Mathis said: 'in the United States, traditional clinical trials may take years or even millions of dollars, or even billions of dollars. Relevant research and technology have proved effective and are now ready. We believe that in Colombia, with scientists, technology, doctors and laboratory partners, we can complete this experiment faster and at a lower cost. "
In fact, more simply, it is because Colombia's clinical research regulations are very friendly to gene therapy trials. It is one of the fastest countries in Latin America to obtain approval for such research.
Scientists have speculated for years that telomerase may hold the key to aging to some extent. In addition to libella, bioviva, another American biotechnology company, issued an amazing Declaration on reversing aging in 2017.
Elizabeth Parrish, CEO of bioviva, advertised that she was the first person to successfully recover young people through gene therapy. She accepted her company's experimental therapy and reversed 20 years of normal telomere shortening.
According to Parrish, she received two treatments in 2016, one to prevent muscle atrophy and the other to prolong telomeres discussed in this article.
Bioviva's gene therapy, like libella, also transports telomerase into the blood with the help of a weakened virus called adeno-associated virus. The virus infects human cells and releases its payload into the cells, where the 'transgene' produces additional telomerase.
It sounds easy, but it is much more complicated in practice. Gene therapy may have unexpected negative effects. At present, no human experiment has shown that it can effectively transfer telomerase to human cells.
However, studies on mice have shown some remarkable results: in 2012, a team of scientists from the Spanish National Cancer Center used adeno-associated virus as a vector to deliver telomerase to mice and found that it 'has significant beneficial effects on health and physical fitness.' At one and two years of age, the median lifespan of telomerase treated mice increased by 24% and 13%, respectively. "
This exciting scientific achievement, as well as other similar achievements, makes bioviva want to try the same therapy in humans. But the subsequent results have to be thought-provoking.
Bioviva said that according to the measurement results of white blood cell telomere length by Parrish in September 2015, they had another test before the start of treatment and in March 2016. Finally, she claims that her telomeres have become longer, from 6.71 kilobases to 7.33 kilobases. This increase corresponds to about 20 years of aging: in other words, Parrish's leukocytes' become biologically younger '.
Can you believe the conclusion of an experiment involving only one person? Besides, did Parrish's telomeres really get longer? Even if you believe bioviva, there are still several important questions to answer. First, the company itself reported that prior to the start of the experiment, Parrish's telomeres had a length that was not commensurate with his age. Does this mean that the measured value deviates only a little, and the second measured value is closer to the real number? Second, as Rita middot, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; As Rita Efros explained in an interview:
'the main problem is that peripheral blood contains many different types of cells with different telomere lengths. Therefore, simple changes in the proportion of different types of cells in peripheral blood can easily explain these data. "
In other words, Parrish's telomeres may not have lengthened. Despite the apparently accurate figures (6.71 and 7.33), bioviva did not provide any details to show that these measurements were accurate and repeatable. If they made multiple measurements before and after treatment, their conclusion may be more convincing if these measurements show that Parrish's telomere length has indeed increased.
In addition, bioviva itself flashes a danger signal. Parrish is not a scientist herself, although she is eloquent (see her interview on YouTube). Even more worrying is their chief medical officer, Jason & middot; Jason Williams once operated 'a suspicious stem cell clinic' precision stemcell (now located in Mexico) to provide stem cell therapy for patients with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), but there is no evidence that this therapy is effective.
Therefore, libella is the second company after bioviva that wants to use commercial telomerase gene therapy for human beings. If this test is successful, it proves that gene therapy is feasible to reverse aging, and its prospect is immeasurable.