Big News on telomerase at the Nature Biotechnology Website. A press release about the latest issue highlights an article on major telomerase research progress (see link and summary below).
This is very important news and once it is publicized by the media my guess is it will help GERN's stock price.
biotech.nature.com
All's well that ends well for transplants
Most cells die after a few divisions. But high levels of
telomerase (TERT), an enzyme that restores the ends of
chromosomes, could extend cellular shelf life in the laboratory,
enabling their culture for use in transplantation. Immortality could
be dangerous, however, as the presence of TERT has been
suggested to increase the likelihood that cells turn cancerous
once transplanted into the body. Now, Peter Hornsby and
colleagues have shown that cells expressing TERT and another
viral protein survive much longer when grown outside of the
body and significantly form functional tissue following
transplantation in the body without any evidence for cancer.
TERT repairs the tips of chromosomes, which would otherwise
shorten every time a cell divides. Using the premise that TERT
could extend the life of cultured cells and enable their use in
transplantation, Hornsby's team expressed the enzyme in
adrenal cells from cows, which they then transplanted into mice
whose adrenal glands had been surgically removed. When the
mice were examined 36 days post surgery, the
TERT-expressing adrenal cells had formed functional adrenal
tissue and appeared to be morphologically normal, even though
overexpression of TERT has been associated with the
development and progression of cancer, at least in certain cell
types. The results were particularly surprising because the
adrenal cells were also given a gene encoding a known
contributor to oncogenic progression, SV40 T antigen. They
clearly show that TERT overexpression is not an obligate step in
cancer development, and that certain cells may be able to
tolerate its expression. Most importantly, the work opens up the
possibility of growing almost unlimited supplies of cells for
therapeutic purposes. |
