Summary: Main takeaway – the future of cellular reprogramming is bright, but there are still major hurdles to overcome before the technology can be used in a clinical setting. Cellular reprogramming is the process of reverting a cell to an earlier state. This paper provides an excellent and highly readable overview of progress in the cellular reprogramming field to date, as well as its future therapeutic prospects. It summarises the evidence from multiple studies that have shown that full reprogramming to pluripotency reverses most ageing hallmarks, and that partial reprogramming also has substantial rejuvenative effects, but without the loss of cell identity that accompanies full reprogramming. This distinction is important, as any therapy that attempts to harness cellular reprogramming as an age-reversal therapy in humans has to make sure that is does not cause cells to revert all the way to a pluripotent state – this could result in the formation of teratomas or even turn an organism into a blob of stem cells.
Perhaps most importantly, this paper provides a good overview of the recent excitement around cellular reprogramming, the companies working on cellular reprogramming, and the various approaches that they are investigating to ultimately take cellular reprogramming to the clinic. These companies range from the much-talked-about Altos Labs, which aims to “restore cell health and resilience” (they are famous for avoiding the word “longevity”, likely because of the negative connotation that it still has in some people’s mind) to Turn Biotechnologies, which is exploring the use of mRNA therapy to achieve partial cellular reprogramming. The authors end by stating that “cellular reprogramming has emerged as
the most promising current approach for human rejuvenation” – a bold statement, but one that is not without merit.
Original Article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2022.01.011