Did the most significant news story of all time just slip quietly by during the furor over the pandemic? Or is this cold fusion redux?
I saw that news on Science Daily. Yes, this may be the real thing, but there’s likely to be a lot more work before we know for sure. For one thing, it works in mice and in in vitro human cells, but the big question is: will it work in humans?
Have there been a lot of experiments that work in vitro but not in vivo? Honest question: I have no idea.
If your comparison to cold fusion is meant to say that, like cold fusion, we hear news stories of that sort on a regular basis, then I can relate to that. Which is not to say that I doubt these researchers have made a significant progress in their work; but it’s certainly a long, long way before any practical application of these results hits the market (and even when it does, the application will not be some gadget that simply rejuvenates people; more likely it will be a therapy to target and repair organ damage).
Things working in vitro but not in vivo happens all the friggin’ time in biology research. It’s by far the most common outcome of any given investigation. Probably makes it hard for biology researchers to keep their hopes up.
I thought that the size of telomeres dictated how many times cells could divide.
Um. :dubious:
By conservative estimate there have been a zillion drugs that worked in vitro (i.e. in cells in a test tube) and either did not work in living organisms or had severe side effects that made their use untenable (the report that one version of these “factors” caused fatal cancers in their rodent hosts might be a wee cause for concern).
Also, there have been many many treatments that looked highly promising based on results in mice and rats, and never translated successfully to humans.
I dunno though. In the Pendergast novels, Constance Greene is kept youthful and living for well over 100 years by Dr. Leng’s elixir, originally compounded with the aid of human cauda equina extract and later synthesized in a lab. Maybe Yamanaka factors will not only be a real-life Fountain of Youth but cure coronavirus too.