Implications of Recent Work in Telomeres and Cell Senescence

Summary: Rally the troops, this is the era when shit comes to light

Paper by Michael Fossel in Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring (Northern) 1998

Michael Fossel was the editor-in-chief of the journal. This is a support-building piece for the claim that modifying aging is possible and that we now actually know something about aging.

Among other things, it says that we can now insert functioning telomerase into cells, that this reverses senescence in cells (((that they stop dividing))), and that we can now test if cell senescence is an important factor in aging.

(((I won't cover these type of articles much)))


Abstract follows:

To date, although the mean human life span has been quite alterable, the maximum human life span has not. Recent work demonstrates that the maximum healthy life span of several species can be extended by dietary restriction and genetic alteration; potentially the maximum healthy human life span might be extended in a similar fashion. More dramatically, researchers have now shown that cell senescence can be reversed by transfection of the catalytic component of telomerase in normal human cells. This allows us to test the hypothesis that cell senescence underlies human aging and age-related disease. This possibility has unprecedented and profound implications for clinical medicine; it has equally unprecedented and profound—and largely unpredictable—implications for our social structures as well.