Weekly reads: macrophage therapy, Putin longevity push, human embryo base editing

I’ve often wondered why there hasn’t been more research on macrophage therapy.

Macrophages are some of the coolest cells in the body. They are capable of not just eating other cells (hence their name), but also numerous other functions.

Before we dive into that, below is the latest stem cell video from my collaboration with Parmin Sedigh. Check it out and please subscribe to both of our YouTube channels.

Macrophage therapy

• Autologous macrophage therapy increases transplant-free survival in cirrhosis: Long-term follow-up of a phase 2 clinical trial, Cell Stem Cell. The mechanism here? It’s not totally clear, but from the authors: “Although we caution against overinterpretation due to low patient numbers, our data suggest that stabilization of predominantly proinflammatory cytokines, spanning both innate and adaptive immune pathways, correlates with improved survival during LTFU.”

Recommended reads

• At the Enhanced Games, Rules Are for Suckers, NYT. In this wacky world of sports, things like unproven peptides and steroids are encouraged.
• ‘Are we just going to give up and die like every other generation?’ At the Vitalist Bay longevity conference, dreamers and entrepreneurs launch an industry, STAT News. 
• Inside Putin’s $26 Billion Quest for Longevity, WSJ.

Problematic Nature News article on peptides

Is the peptide craze backed by science? The promise behind the hype, Nature. I talked to the journalist for this article and expressed serious concerns about pop peptides. That didn’t come through in the quote from me, which is frustrating.

Also, the “promise behind the hype” element of the title is problematic too. Overall, the article has some depth and balance, which is good, but it could have been a lot better.

Human reprogramming: from the eye to the whole body?

World-first: therapy to make cells young again trialled in a person A participant in a landmark clinical trial has been given a cellular-reprogramming treatment that aims to rejuvenate damaged cells in the eye, Nature.

We’ll see how the ER-100 trial goes. Huge risks here.

David Sinclair is reportedly also excited about the idea of reprogramming the body overall to positively impact longevity: David Sinclair plans to test whole-body rejuvenation drugs in the XPrize competition.

Human embryo base editing

Then we have this: Scientists Edit Human Embryo Genes With Startling Precision, NYT. Not so sure about the “startling” word in the headline of this piece, but the science from Dieter Egli’s lab is really interesting. It’s hard to say how close or far even this tech could be from being safe in humans. As I’ve discussed here on The Niche before, in the long run, editing human primordial germ cells could be a superior future approach if one is intent on heritable human genome editing.

Heritable human genome editing will generally be unnecessary for genetic disease prevention considering the power of embryo screening. Still, not everyone has enough embryos to do readily benefit from screening methods like PGD/PGS, but in such cases the odds of successful genome editing are very low too. Also, some kind of PGD/PGS is 100% necessary when doing hypothetical heritable editing too if you want to have any clue of what is going on with the embryo like the extent of mosaicism. As I’ve also pointed out numerous times, with embryo editing you can never really rule out mosaicism and still have cells left for the embryo to develop. This is just one area where primordial germ cell editing should be more effective.

More from SciAM on this embryo editing paper: Report of gene-edited human embryos sparks worries about the technology’s future uses. The piece includes quotes from Egli.