A Narrow Review on Progress Towards Gene Therapies to Treat Aging

There are a great many genes that one might target with gene therapies to treat aspects of aging. The review here is quite narrow in scope, and only looks at a few approaches to gene therapy, and a few of the genes that might be targeted, those that have arguably received more attention in this context and are either the subjects of small clinical trials or might be entering trials in the near future. It even omits follistatin and myostatin in favor of telomerase, klotho, VEGF, and APOE. The latter is probably not all that interesting as a target, but it is very well researched as a result of the strong focus on funding Alzheimer's disease programs over the past few decades. The telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene encodes the rate-limiting catalytic TERT protein, a subunit of telomerase. Studies on telomeres and telomerase have been conducted since the start of research on aging. Many studies have shown that defects in telomeres or telomerase exert a substantial influence on the development of aging-related diseases. Some in vivo experiments have already reported that TERT gene therapy exhibits exciting efficacy for treating diverse diseases. Researchers tentatively introduced AAV-mouse Tert into 12- and 24-month-old mice, and they found noticeable improvements in various aging-related molecular biomarkers. Interestingly, an increase in median lifespan was also observed. Later, researchers designed an AAV9 vector that expressed Tert in heart tissue to treat ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs