Every now and then a scientific article just causes my head to spin a full 360^o. My current example in this regard was published recently online in Nature by Mariela Jaskelioff and colleagues with the title “Telomerase reactivation reverses tissue degeneration in aged telomerase-deficient mice” (Nature. 2010 Nov 28. [Epub ahead of print]). By way of background, telomerase is an enzyme that helps maintain telomeres (the caps at the tips of chromosomes). Telomere loss has been implicated in aging, just as the over-expression of telomerase by immortalized cells represents one of the hallmarks of cancer.

Jaskelioff and her colleagues (working in Ron DePinho’s lab at Harvard) used a mouse model in which the mice have short, dysfunctional telomeres, sustaining lots of damage to their DNA with progressive signs of aging. They engineered the mice to turn on telomerase in response to an external signal (4-OH-tamoxifen, interestingly enough). Waiting until the mice were decrepit, they revved up the telomerase, and presto! The telomeres return to their appropriate size, and telomere-related aging effects turn out to be quite reversible, including (my head throbs with pleasure to hear this) reversal in age-related loss of neuronal tissue in the brain.

This is one of those exceptionally cool experiments suggesting that the way we have always looked at things may not be the way things must always be. Answering the age-old question, “are you a man or a mouse,” my answer now would be “I hope as a man to someday emulate telomerase-inducible mice.” As long, of course, as inducing telomerase in my normal cells is accompanied by its suppression in any premalignant cells that happen to be hiding out in my prostate. Of interest, telomerase inhibitors (the opposite of the intervention in the mice) are now in active development in Phase II cancer trials.

The “what would happen to society if aging was eliminated” question is an old science-fiction trope, but not one that I took seriously until now. Maybe we should. The philosophical and practical implications are endless: Should Justice Scalia be on the Supreme Court a century from now? How many marriages and jobs can a telomere-rich person expect to experience? For the moment, though, it is enough for me to read the article and wonder at the cleverness of the experimenters.

By an interesting coincidence, the American Association for Cancer Research is headed this year by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, the discoverer of telomerase. Dr. Blackburn, in an attempt to upstage the current ASCO president, is this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. She is as delightful a person as she is distinguished as a scientist, and it is wonderful to see her work heading off in two very different directions (anti-aging and anti-cancer).