Telomere History

In the early 90s, Geron Corporation was founded by Mike West with a mission statement no less ambitious then to discover immortality through telomere extension. His VC pitch went over as well as any in recent Silicon Valley history and he was given millions to pursue his dream and to recruit the best telomere scientists in the world. Their near-term vision was to isolate the gene that codes for telomerase, insert it into a somatic cell (which already had a copy but which was dormant) and thereby immortalize that cell line in vitro. And to the world’s amazement, at the turn of the century, that’s exactly what they did.

Since telomerase is also hijacked by 90% of Cancerous cells as way to get around the Hayflick Limit – which serves as what we believe is the dual purpose of limiting individual life span as well as serving as a defense to Cancer, the world waited anxiously to see if constant expression of telomerase in these cells would cause cancer in them. So far the cells are Cancer-free. In the hundreds of replications of this experiment by scientists all over the world, so far there have been no reports of Cancer.

Rejuvenating Skin

From this point on, it was apparent that telomere erosion and not cellular wear-and-tear or accumulated DNA damage, was controlling aging and death at the cellular level, but we still did not have a way to plainly see what the effect of this cellular aging was at the macroscopic level, at the level of a human tissue. But then a truly remarkable experiment was performed where the skin cells of an older individual were allowed to grow in vitro then grafted onto a mouse. The skin took and grew on the mouse's back as old human skin. Then the cells of a young subject were used and the skin grew on the mouse as young skin. That is, the skin was well stratified and demonstrated collagen and other protein levels typical of young skin. The robust juncture between the underlying fibroblast layer and the upper keratinocyte layer, typical of youthful skin, was maintained. Then, old cells were used again, but the telomeres of those cells were lengthened and allowed to divide and then were grafted back onto the mouse. The skin grew back as young skin. This experiment both let us see from a macroscopic level what the effects of telomere erosion and extension were, and let us see that with telomere extension, we could literally make a human tissue more youthful in a profound sense. It finally allowed us to visualize the gap between cellular aging and organismal aging and see that they were very closely related.

Telomeres and Immortality in Biotech Today

This experiment was performed by none other than the scientists at Geron, the now undisputed leaders in telomere biology. But there was still no way yet to transfect this gene to human cells in vivo or otherwise activate telomerase in them and so the dream of the Fountain of Youth was still a ways off. Investors got antsy, dissent stirred within the company, Mike West was marginalized from the company he started, and left. Ostensibly today, Geron is not looking for the Fountain of Youth. They are focusing strictly on more practical, near-term applications of telomere science, such as particular tissue rejuvenation and Cancer therapies aimed at depriving Cancerous cells of the telomerase they need to get around the Hayflick Limit.  Although, when the true Fountain of Youth is let loose on humanity, we won't be surprised to hear that it came from Geron.  But maybe it will come from elsewhere:  A few of the original employees who refused to let go of the dream spun off into Sierra Sciences. Also, a company called Telomolecular was born around that time, whose mission statement is to use nanocircles – tiny circles of DNA that are the complement to the TTAGGG repeat – to somehow roll along the end of the telomere and extend it.  TA Sciences was recently born with a compound they licensed from Geron, TA65, that claims to activate telomerase and possibly elongate or maintain telomere lengths.   In each of these companies, the telomere theory of aging is all but a foregone conclusion, and we at Terraternal salute them and anxiously await their continued progress.