MOSCOW, August 19, Tatyana Pichugina. The head of the American company BioViva, Elizabeth Parrish, claims that her biological age has been halved thanks to the «old age vaccine.» Is it possible to believe this and what is anti-aging gene therapy?Elizabeth Parrish describes herself as an entrepreneur, biohacker and patient zero who has experienced a gene therapy drug for old age. And in 2013, she was an ordinary wife and mother, helping her husband in the IT business, was fond of medicine and especially stem cells.
Everything turned upside down when Elizabeth's nine-year-old son was diagnosed with type I diabetes. This currently incurable disease often manifests itself at a young age.
The doctors and clinics made a deep impression on the parents. The gulf between fundamental research and practical medicine seemed huge. Scientists had already deciphered the genome and tried to grow organs for transplantation, but the treatment of diabetes remained conservative.
In search of a solution, Parrish went to a conference on aging hosted by Aubrey de Grey, a longevity activist and biohacker. There she met Professor George Church from Harvard, a famous geneticist, molecular engineer and chemist.
Then Parrish went to Silicon Valley to see biologist Bill Andrews, who discovered the gene for telomerase, an enzyme that lengthens the ends of chromosomes, which is directly related to age. The scientist devoted his career to finding a cure for aging, which he considered as a disease. So Parrish's interest shifted from diabetes to a more ambitious goal. She founded one startup, and then another — BioViva. Andrews and Church joined the scientific council.
Patient Zero
BioViva developments are based on experiments published in 2012Maria Blasco of the National Cancer Center of Spain. Together with a group of colleagues, the researcher succeeded in increasing telomeres in mice using an adeno-associated viral vector carrying the gene for the telomerase enzyme TERT. Importantly, there was no increase in cancer in the experimental animals, although scientists feared it.
Parrish decided to try the gene therapy on herself outside the US because the FDA would not approve clinical trials. In September 2015, she flew to the capital of Colombia, where she received more than a hundred injections of a drug containing the follistatin protein gene in a private clinic. As previously shown in laboratory studies, its activation increases muscle mass in mice. The second injection is intravenous with a viral vector carrying the telomerase gene.
Another phase of treatment followed in September 2020. Two years later, the attending physicians published a review article in the Indian Medical Literature Publishing House.
The paper says that before the injections, the subject's telomeres contained 6.71 thousand base pairs, which corresponds to 62 years. At the same time, she was then 44. In July 2021, the telomeres of “patient zero” consisted of 8.94 thousand base pairs. It turns out that they lengthened, although it should have been the other way around. Now the estimated biological age of Elizabeth is 25 years. According to a recent Wired article, he met Parrish in 2019 and she looked to be at most forty. «photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.75″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»450″ data-source-sid=»» class=»lazyload» lazy=»1″ />
Scientific verification
In 2020, BioViva began informal trials of a new drug on volunteers with Alzheimer's disease in Mexico. Volunteers were brought in from the US by bus, injected into the nose to get the drug to the brain, and sent back.
The subjects were injected with a viral vector with two anti-aging genes: telomerase and the protein klotho, which animal studies have shown , improves memory. The idea was to activate the synthesis of these proteins in the brain and reverse the disease.
A brief summary of the test results with a minimum of detail appearedin the magazine of the same Indian publishing house. It refers to five patients with initial or intermediate dementia. An MRI of the head before and after the tests did not reveal any differences, but telomere elongation was found in four people. Also, in the first three and a half months, the volunteers improved their memory, then the effect faded.
The scientific community received Parrish's experiments rather coolly. Maria Blasko said that any gene therapy needs to be reviewed and approved by regulatory authorities. Professor Timothy Caulfield of the University of Alberta, in an interview with the Guardian, suspected Parrish of spreading pseudoscience. Even George Church was quick to distance himself by saying that he only advised the company on obtaining approval for clinical trials. Duncan Baird of Cardiff Medical School questioned whether the only way to look younger is to lengthen telomeres. Still, aging, he noted, is a more complex process.
Not a single telomere
“The telomere hypothesis of aging is generally accepted. However, now there is less faith in the fact that there is a direct relationship between telomere length and age,” says molecular biologist, specialist in telomerase and telomere biology, Doctor of Chemistry Maria Rubtsova, Professor of the Department of Chemistry of Natural Compounds Department of Chemistry, Moscow State University, RSF grant recipient. “In the US, at one time they thought about taking into account the length of telomeres when calculating the cost of life insurance, but the idea was not widely adopted.”
In addition, to assess age, this parameter is measured in blood cells, and there it changes depending on various factors. For example, under stress, telomeres shorten, then they are restored. «Length is affected by many different mechanisms, and they are not fully understood,» the researcher notes.
The telomerase enzyme in most cells of the body is deactivated during embryonic development. In adults, it remains in the stem cells responsible for regeneration. This is important for organs and tissues such as the intestines and blood. «The bulk of the cells during life is very little updated. Due to the shortening of telomeres with age, cells of the immune system suffer,» explains Rubtsova.
Telomerase is active in cancer cells. Associated with this are fears that artificial lengthening of telomeres causes the development of malignant tumors.
Checking Parrish's claim about rejuvenation is quite difficult, since there is nothing to compare with, points out Maria Rubtsova. Gene therapy for telomere lengthening is mainly being tested in mice. And although there are successes, they should not be projected onto a person. First, organisms are too different. Secondly, transgenic mice are used in experiments, in which telomerase genes are left turned on throughout the body or they are activated specifically in certain cell types. It is not ethically possible to conduct such experiments on humans. And third: in laboratory mice, telomeres are, in principle, longer than in wild ones. There are other nuances.
«The length of telomeres is individual. It differs in people of the same age, sometimes by more than 20 percent. At the same time, people look about the same,» explains the professor.
To establish a direct link between telomere length and appearance, many years of research are needed. «I have not heard of such work. Now they are looking more at the characteristics of centenarians. Their telomeres are longer, but there is not much data: no one has regularly studied the length of telomeres in centenarians throughout their lives,» says Rubtsova.
Recently, data have been obtained that the active telomerase gene in mice reduces the aging of the heart muscle and circulatory system. But how it can be safely transferred to humans is the question.
«I regularly attend conferences on telomerase, Parrish's experiments are not discussed there. The main trend in life extension is the study of cellular metabolism,» the researcher says.
The bottom line is that if the cells starve a little, then in search of energy sources they will switch to the processing of their internal components — primarily to non-functional ones, formed, for example, as a result of stress. So, if you limit your calorie intake, then the body will remain young and active longer. Experiments prove this. title='Biochemists from Moscow State University have found a new «life protein» in human junk DNA»>
“A low-calorie diet, exercise, stress reduction allow us to live longer, improve brain function,” says Maria Rubtsova. Gene therapy hasn't been researched enough to be used in humans, she said, except for rare hereditary diseases where no other means are available. «If you can get by with a healthy lifestyle, why use untested approaches with unknown consequences,» the biologist emphasizes.
Meanwhile, another article from BioViva is outthis time in a much more prestigious journal, PNAS. The authors, including Parrish, are mostly related to the company. The paper describes the results of a test of anti-aging vaccine on mice. Mouse cytomegalovirus MCMV was chosen as the carrier of telomerase and follistatin genes.
Several groups of age female rodents received drugs by nose and injection. Some animals lived 35 percent longer than usual. Telomere length in the kidneys, muscles, brain, heart, lungs and liver has tripled. These results were considered promising. According to George Church, who advised the study, the peculiarity of the work is the use of the Kaplan-Meier statistical method to estimate extended life. There are plans to continue trials of combined gene therapy for diseases such as chronic inflammation, type II diabetes, dementia, and sacropia. =»photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.545711592836946″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»327″ data-source-sid=»» class=»lazyload» lazy=»1″/