In Vivo Therapy Development Will Take A Lot of Work
Calico’s latest news. Technical.
The reprogramming of somatic cells to induced pluripotent cells (iPSCs), was thought at first to be the best way to get all the patient-matched cells required for tissue engineering and cell therapies. Over the last 15 years, a lot of research has been done to achieve this goal. The research community hasn’t reached that point yet but there has been significant progress. Recent research has shown that partial reprogramming could be used as a therapy to improve tissue function in animals and humans without converting large numbers of cells to iPSCs, which would increase the risk of cancer and tissue loss.
Reprogramming activates the same mechanisms that rejuvenate the embryonic tissues. It removes epigenetic markers and restores youthful mitochondrial function. Although it cannot repair damage like mutations in nuclear DNA or the accumulation of metabolic wastes, there are enough potential benefits to justify developing this treatment for aging. Some groups have demonstrated that partial reprogramming – via transient expressions of reprogramming factor – can reverse functional loss in cells from aged tissue without causing those cells to lose their differentiated types. This is a complex business. The tissues are composed of different cell types that can require subtle differences in reprogramming.
The open access preprint of today is an example of the work ahead in the exploration of In vivo Reprogramming. Different cell types will behave differently and require different recipes, approaches, times of exposure and so on. As most tissues consist of a mixture of different cell types, it is difficult to imagine a near-term therapy that works like current gene therapies. The evidence, which includes the one in this paper, indicates that it is possible to rejuvenate epigenetic patterns, and improve mitochondrial function, without having to risk somatic cells becoming stem cells.
Source:
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/05/a-great-deal-of-work-lies-ahead-in-the-development-of-in-vivo-reprogramming-as-a-therapy/
