X-Message-Number: 5592 Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 12:19:14 -0400 From: (Rodney Perkins) Subject: PATNEWS: Want to live forever? I received this from the Patent News service on Saturday, January 13, 1996. Does anyone have more detailed information about "telomeres"? >Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 08:38:26 -0500 >From: (Gregory Aharonian) >Subject: PATNEWS: Want to live forever? >Sender: >To: >Reply-to: >Precedence: bulk > >!19960111 Want to live forever? > > What is cancer (at least some cases), but being immortal all at once? >Immortality or very long lives implies some sort of gradual cell renewal. >But if it happens too quickly, you get cancer. For many cells, there is >a piece of DNA at the end of chromosomes called telomeres. Each time >your cells divide, these telomeres shorten slightly. When they are cut >down to a certain length, the cell commits the equivalent of suicide. >Thus part of the reason we all age is that there is at least one clock >inside our cells that gradually causes cells to stop renewing themselves. >Some cancer cells however don't experience a shortening of their telomeres, >and are thus "immortal", and eventually spread into the wrong places of >the body (much like a weed is a plant in the wrong place). > > Now while there are many reasons that we age, and our cells die, and >many reasons why we get cancer, there is an intimate link between cancer, >aging and our genes. In fact, one aspect of this link is to treat cancer >cells with something that causes the telomeres to shorten, forcing the >suicide of the cancerous cells (without affecting noncancerous cells). > > However, there is another aspect of this link that is little talked >about, even in its general implications, that of manipulating the telomeres >of healthy cells so that they don't shorten, but without causing the cells >to become cancerous. Pop a telomere pill, drink a human growth hormone and >dehydroepiandrosterone chaser, and gain an extra year each year. Sounds great. >Also sounds science fiction. > > But increasingly there is becoming no such thing as science fiction, >which really stinks because I like science fiction. Such is the case with >this telomere lengthening concept. > > A collaboration between the University of Texas at Austin, and a Silicon >Valley biotech company, Geron Corporation, has three patents pending dealing >with this very technique. The PCT applications, > > WO 95/13381 - Telomerase activity assays > WO 95/13382 - Therapy and diagnosis of conditions related to > telomere length and/or telomerase activity > WO 95/13383 - Methods and reagants for lengthening telomeres > >the latter of which has the heretical abstract "Method and composition for >increasing telomere length in normal cells can be used to increase the >proliferative capacity of cells and to delay the onset of cellular >senescence". Just think, you can read my patent news stories for hundreds >of years :-) > > Order me a bottle or two. Unfortunately it is decades away before we >can goto to a pharmacy and find a real fountain of youth in a bottle. Thus >I am not sure of the investment opportunities here. But patents like these, >and many more to come in future years attacking other aspects of aging, are >pushing the envelope, so to speak. Not only the envelope of science and >aging, but the envelope of religion. There is no truce, just a lull until >the next battle. > > > > >Greg Aharonian >Internet Patent News Service >P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA, 02178 >617-489-3727, >(for info on free subscription, send 'help' to ) >(for prior art search services info, send 'prior' to ) >(for WWW patent searching, try http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html ) >(for software patent alert service, send 'alert" to ) > Rodney Perkins () Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston (TCSUH) Office of Public Affairs PGP mail preferred; for my public key, send a message to with "get " as subject. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5592