I agree with your assessment of this report. It has been known for some time that with some tissue culture cells, telomere shortening is a major cause of death (senescence). Hence, this process can be reversed by activating telomerase in these cells. However, there is no evidence that telomere shortening is involved in aging of normal human cells and/or humans. Even in very old people, they have plenty of telomere left. Furthermore, even if telomere shortening were important for aging (and adding telomerase back to these cells could reverse the aging process), this finding is completely irrelevant in terms of Geron having a product. Presently, there is no way to specifically "turn on" the telomerase gene in cells, and these findings do not address this question. Alternatively, one might consider gene therapy to add an active copy of telomerase to cells. This possibility is complete pie-in-the-sky for at least another 10-20 years due to the lack of technology for efficient incorporation of genes into living cells. Presently, the best gene therapy approaches in living organisms result in the gene being incorporated into 0.1-1% of the cells in a small area in the organism (i.e., a localized tumor).
I have never shorted a stock before, but if this one goes up a bit more, I will short GERN since when people stop to think about the meaning of this finding, I believe they will conclude that it has no importance with regard to product development. |
