Dramatic rejuvenation of prematurely aged mice hints at potential therapy.
Premature ageing can be reversed by reactivating an enzyme that protects the tips of chromosomes, a study in mice suggests.
Mice engineered to lack the enzyme, called telomerase, become prematurely decrepit. But they bounced back to health when the enzyme was replaced. The finding, published online today in Nature1, hints that some disorders characterized by early ageing could be treated by boosting telomerase activity.
This is exciting research. Let's hope it can eventually be safely applicable to humans, without the danger of runaway cell division, as in cancer. To read the rest of the article, click here.