Imagine a world where women and men...

Imagine a world where women and men examine as young as they claim to be. Picture a planet where inhabitants remain wrinkle-free and forever young. perfect impossible? Fantastical? Maybe not. In fact, researchers are taking Texas-sized strides toward unraveling the mysteries that drive the aging proces -- paving the way for longer life spans and more effective treatments for many diseases from cancer to AIDS.

What they have "discovered" has been dubbed "the immortality gene" which can be reflection of as the hand that winds a cell's internal clock

Researchers have lengthy known that telomeres, or the genetic blueprints that reside upon the tip of all solitary abode; squalids are gradually depleted each time a small cavity divides. Eventually, normal cells stop dividing and jot down senescence, or old age.

Preliminary research displays that adding the genetic digest for a protein product -- telomerase -- to enclosed spaces can cause them to continue dividing -- by-passing senescence altogether, reported enclosed space biologist Dr. Woodring E. Wright of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and colleagues at Geron Corporation in Menlo Park, Calif., in the journal, Science.

confined apartments typically divide 60 to 70 times, still Wright's cells are now up to 130 divisions -- and they are not showing any signs of abnormalities.

"In the near, near subsequent time [these findings] will have an enormous impact forward how we do research," said Wright. And, eventually, investigators will explore the possibility of treating genetic diseases, like as muscular dystrophy, via rejuvenated-cell therapy, Wright predicted. This step would involve taking aging small rooms and rejuvenating them with telomerase in the laboratory. Then, doctors could conceivably re-infuse the solitary abode; squalids into patients, sort of like a "cell transfusion."

Scientists will single in kind day try to rejuvenate lonely dwellings to see if they can stop, dull or prevent a variety of age-related diseases and conditions, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as wrinkles, heart disease, calamity and macular degeneration. An age-related estimate disease marked by deterioration of the center of the retina, macular degeneration, the mostly common cause of blindness in the somewhat old may occur when retina small cavitys fail to divide.

Rejuvenated-cell therapy could also help doctors treat vascular disease on rejuvenating the cells that line vital current vessels. When these cells age, they may in some way contribute to hardening of the arteries -- the hallmark of vascular disease.

A certain image of immune system cells, called T-lymphocyte ne to divide substantially to shield the body from bacteria and viruses. The lack of telomerase may hamper the immune system's ability to fight infection as we swell older and our T-cells use up their divisions, according to research published in the June 1996 issue of Journal of Experimental Medicine. "Feeding" telomerase to immune arrangement cells may allow them to divide more times and improve our defense against infections as we age.

There are still certain barriers obstructing researchers' path to the fountain of youth, as it is as the cancer conundrum. Up to 90 percent of all cancer small rooms express telomerase, and some researchers give an inkling of that the telomerase system evolv as a way to defend the body from cancer. Unlike normal small rooms cancer cells divide without limit. Thus, any process of enhancing the cell's natural division proces may inadvertently cause cancer or hasten its development

forward the flip side of the coin, the recent technology may allow scientists to make known telomerase inhibitors, which can stop cancer small cavitys from growing and spreading.

"The major importance of [Wright's work] is that it validates the universal that telomere shortening somehow functions as a solitary abode; squalid division `clock,'" commented Dr. Vincent J Cristofalo, a gerontologist at Allegheny University of Health Sciences in Philadelphia, and president of the American Federation for Aging Research, based in recently made known York.

The challenge ahead lies in figuring public how to specifically turn telomerase on the farther side in certain cells, such as those that cause cancer, nevertheless on in other cells, of that kind as those which cause age-related macular degeneration, he added.

REFERENCES

Bodnar A.G., et al. "Extension of Lifespan by dint of Introduction of Telomerase into Normal Human Cells" Science 279:349-352 1998

Lyon M "The Paradox of Immortality," Southwestern Magazine, 1996 Annual Review issue, pp 42-46

Wang NP et al. "Relegated Expression of Telomerase Activity in Human T-lymphocyte disclosure and Activation," Journal of Experimental Medicine 183:2471-2479 1996

Denise Mann is the senior editor for the Medical Tribune novels Service, and three physician newspapers. Her articles in succession such topics as women's health, nutrition, and fitness appear forward a daily basis in many national and international newspapers from the Chicago orb of day Times to the Detroit exempt Press.

COPYRIGHT 1998 PRIMEDIA Intertec, a PRIMEDIA Company. All Rights Reserved

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group