Restoring the Body’s Ability to Heal Itself

Interest and support are flowing to research that will restore cell function 

Controlled cellular reprogramming is getting long-overdue attention as a powerful strategy to help fight the effects of aging. The interest is encouraging because it can help us reach the day when we restore the body’s ability to heal itself.

One reason why the body breaks down as people age is that the cellular epigenome undergoes modifications that compromise DNA methylation – the mechanism used by cells to control gene expression. Gene expression is what enables the body to destroy damaged cells, produce new cells and replace and repair damaged tissue.

An article in the journal Nature Biotechnology discusses the growing interest in companies seeking to create anti-aging interventions that restore cellular function by reprogramming a cell’s epigenome.

The interest is dramatic. Altos Labs recently launched with $3 billion in funding, NewLimit launched with $105 million in support from a single founder, and Calico Labs has multi-billion-dollar support from Google’s parent, Alphabet, and pharmaceutical company AbbVie.

Methuselah Foundation is thrilled by the interest. We have focused on epigenetic reprogramming since 2018, when we made the founding investment in Turn Biotechnologies, a company devoted to precisely reprogramming the epigenome to restore cellular capabilities that are often lost as a person ages.

The challenge of epigenetic reprogramming is to carefully control the process.  Too much reprogramming – using transcription factors to rejuvenate a somatic cell – and the cell can become a pluripotent embryonic cell, which can form tumors. Too little reprogramming, and the cell’s function does not improve.

We bet on Turn’s approach to the problem. Turn’s co-founder Vittorio Sebastiano and his team showed that mRNA-based expression of the four Yamanaka transcription factors, plus two accessory factors to boost reprogramming efficiency, could reverse epigenetic and inflammatory signatures and restore regenerative potential in cultured fibroblasts, endothelial cells and chondrocytes from aged people.

Much remains to be done before therapies can actually help restore cell function, but the growing interest in epigenetic reprogramming can only speed our progress.