BioTime, Inc. (NYSE Amex:BTIM), a biotechnology company that develops
and markets products in the field of stem cells and regenerative
medicine, today announced the publication of a scientific paper titled
“Spontaneous Reversal of Developmental Aging in Normal Human Cells
Following Transcriptional Reprogramming.” The article was released
online today in the peer-reviewed journal Regenerative Medicine
in advance of the print publication. The demonstration that the aging of
human cells can be reversed may have significant implications for the
development of new classes of cell-based therapies targeting age-related
degenerative disease. The on-line version of the article can be found at http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/abs/10.2217/rme.10.21.
“At the National Institute on Aging, we reviewed many proposals from
leading gerontologists seeking means to understand and intervene in the
biology of aging”
In the article, BioTime and its collaborators demonstrate the successful
reversal of the developmental aging of normal human cells. Using precise
genetic modifications, normal human cells were induced to reverse both
the “clock” of differentiation (the process by which an embryonic stem
cell becomes the many specialized differentiated cell types of the
body), and the “clock” of cellular aging (telomere length). As a result,
aged differentiated cells became young stem cells capable of
regeneration.
The paper sheds light on the recent controversy over the aged status of
induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. iPS cell technology has excited
the scientific community because it has been demonstrated to be a method
of transforming adult human cells back to a state very similar to
embryonic stem cells (reversing the process of development) without the
use of human embryos. However, recent reports have suggested that iPS
cells, though very similar to embryonic stem cells in many respects, may
not have the normal replicative potential of embryonic stem cells (that
is, the iPS cells may be prematurely old). This problem has been called
“the Achilles heel of iPS cell technology.” BioTime scientists and their
collaborators show in this paper that many iPS cell lines currently
being circulated in the scientific community have short telomeres,
meaning that their clock of cellular aging is still set at the age of
relatively old cells. However, among these prematurely old cells, other
cells can be found with sufficient levels of telomerase (a protein that
keeps reproductive cells young) that allow these cells to reverse
cellular aging all the way back to the very beginning of the human life
cycle.