New gene therapy could help treat premature aging

In a paper published in the British journal Nature Communications, researchers at the Caroline School of Medicine in Sweden and the Italian Cancer Research Foundation's Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan report that their studies of patient cells and animal experiments have shown that antisense oligonucleotide therapy can improve the condition of patients with premature aging and extend their livespremature aging is associated with premature aging protein, which is produced by mutations in the "nuclear fibroid protein A" gene in the human body that affect cell divisionAnonicolinucleotides are synthetic dna fragments that identify target genes through the principle of base complementary pairing and eliminate or reduce diseased genes by preventing the latter from transcribing and translatingresearchers examined cell samples from children with premature aging and found that telomeres at the ends of the cells were impaired and amassed some non-coding RNA associated with telomeresTelomeres is a structure on the chromosomes of human cells, which is like a "protective cap" to prevent wear on both ends of a shoelace, which is very important to keep chromosomes stablein normal cells the telomeres are gradually shortened as cells divide, so telomeres are also thought to be associated with human lifeThe researchers found that cell division in the sample sat tended to be normal after the researchers targeted lowering the levels of such RNA by adding anantonyoli nucleotide therapyin mice with early-onset disease, the researchers increased the maximum life span and life expectancy of mice by 44 percent and 24 percent, respectively, after using ananifyoli nucleotide therapy for mice with premature aging.