Reversing biological aging requires both fertilization and cellular reprogramming; both require pluripotent developmental intermediates which either pose prohibitive costs at an organism level or pose significant teratogenic risks.
Turn’s ERA technology uses messenger RNA to deliver transcription factors that rejuvenate a cell’s epigenome and restore optimal functioning, with evidence showing this rejuvenation process can reverse functional decline of key brain cell types such as oligodendrocytes.
MRNA Reverses Aging
Reversing aging refers to the process of returning an aged biological system back to its initial functional state. While slowing aging may delay functional decline, age reversal can actually restore functionality by recreating earlier biological states (Horvath 2013).
Reversing ageing can be challenging on both an organismal and cellular level. Fertilization, somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), and cell reprogramming all involve dedifferentiation of adult differentiated cells into pluripotent developmental intermediates – processes which either cannot occur due to restrictions at an organism level or carry with them high risks of teratogenicity (Rando and Chang 2012). Cellular reprogramming might offer more feasible approaches, although its success could be limited by loss of identity and acquisition of stem-like properties (Ocampo et al. 2016).
Researchers’ success at reversing aging using specific transcription factors has inspired high throughput perturbation screens to identify transcriptomic reprogramming pathways that may rejuvenate other cell types, with neuronal reprogramming being particularly attractive as it could prevent or delay cognitive decline and other neurodegenerative conditions associated with aging. Human neurons will provide first-of-its-kind transcriptomic atlas data that could serve as the basis for therapeutic strategies to reverse brain aging and stop functional decline.
MRNA Boosts the Immune System
Researchers have developed an effective solution to reverse cell aging. By adding an mRNA cocktail into cells, researchers were able to make them look younger and healthier – known as “cellular age reversal.” Scientists believe that it could play a key role in treating diseases associated with aging such as macular degeneration, sarcopenia, and dementia.
Moderna’s vaccine differs from its competitors by teaching your immune system how to produce antigen on its own using mRNA, which contains instructions that tell cells how to make proteins. Once packaged in protective bubbles made of fat-like molecules, injected directly into muscle of upper arm where it travels directly into cells via LNP carrier particles (carrier particles are particles made up of fat molecules that transport or deliver molecules into them).
These LNPs are specially-made to bind to specific parts of your immune system and deliver mRNA directly. Each LNP contains a positively charged molecule which becomes positively charged when exposed to acidic conditions inside cells; this allows mRNA to enter cells without being diluted and be read by a protein-making machine called ribosomes; they then create proteins which can be recognized by your immune system as antigens of the virus causing illness.
The mRNA then instructs your immune cells to produce antibodies against the pathogen, which will destroy any future invasion and also provide you with protection from future infections.
mRNA vaccine development reduces development time while more efficiently delivering its vaccine into cells than previous methods. Scientists at Drexel University’s College of Medicine and Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania recently used Cap2, an innovative tool used to analyze mRNA-carrier lipid nanoparticles, in order to understand why certain cell types take up its content more readily than others.
MRNA Reverses Inflammation
Inflammation is the result of immune reactions against foreign or damaged cells, often from infections such as bacteria. Cytokines produced during inflammation can promote autoinflammatory and autoimmune conditions, genomic instability and cancer; and accumulations of noncoding small RNA molecules activate intrinsic RNA/DNA sensory pathways as well as unsilenciate retroelements which unsilencing them increases risks of insertional mutational mutation in coding regions and enhance mutation rates in tumor suppressor genes resulting in chronic inflammation status and an increased risk for many diseases.
