Prof. George Church on Cellular Reprogramming and Longevity
Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2023 8:40 pm
We hadn't heard from George Church at Harvard in awhile but in a recent interview, he gave some of his thoughts on where we are with cellular reprogramming.
According to Church, there are two schools of thought on how to reverse aging. One says aging occurs from damage to proteins, lipids, RNA, and DNA and that a therapist would need to go in with his repair kit and fix it.
The other school of thought says age reversal is all about restoring the epigenome to an earlier point in time from a backup copy somewhere in our DNA. But according to Church, some things are beyond epigenetic repair, such as when all copies of a particular necessary gene, like a tumor suppressor, have been completely wiped away over time.
Church believes the proper course then, is a hybrid of these two ideas. He says most repair can be done epigenetically, some via the bloodstream, and other things via the genetic toolkit, like CRISPR or an even more advanced gene editing tool.
Church's lab is currently doing cellular reprogramming experiments with dogs with good results. There are big advancements in the delivery method of these genes with vector viruses.
This is a pretty long article covering many topics but well worth the read:
https://www.lifespan.io/news/prof-georg ... longevity/
According to Church, there are two schools of thought on how to reverse aging. One says aging occurs from damage to proteins, lipids, RNA, and DNA and that a therapist would need to go in with his repair kit and fix it.
The other school of thought says age reversal is all about restoring the epigenome to an earlier point in time from a backup copy somewhere in our DNA. But according to Church, some things are beyond epigenetic repair, such as when all copies of a particular necessary gene, like a tumor suppressor, have been completely wiped away over time.
Church believes the proper course then, is a hybrid of these two ideas. He says most repair can be done epigenetically, some via the bloodstream, and other things via the genetic toolkit, like CRISPR or an even more advanced gene editing tool.
Church's lab is currently doing cellular reprogramming experiments with dogs with good results. There are big advancements in the delivery method of these genes with vector viruses.
This is a pretty long article covering many topics but well worth the read:
https://www.lifespan.io/news/prof-georg ... longevity/