IUBio

Cure for Death

Shankar Ramakrishnan shankar at netcom.com
Thu Dec 21 14:07:58 EST 1995


In article <Pine.OSF.3.91.951220234456.20587H-100000 at Joyce-Perkins.tenet.edu> dashley at TENET.EDU (Don Ashley) writes:
>Geron Corp. in Menlo Park, Ca., founded by Mike West and Miller Quarles, is 
>scientifically  approaching the 'cure'.  They are pioneers in telomerase 
>manipulation.  They started with $50k a few years ago, now sustaining a 
>$60 million research team. Japan now involved financially.
>
>They stand to experience windfall profits in the $billions with 
>significant breakthroughs.  Stock going public in '96.


I am interested in knowing how they wish to manipulate the telomerase of
the cells in the human body. Is their product going to be just a drug or
some other more complicated procedure with a certain risk factor involved?

In any case, I believe that ageing is more than loss of telomerase. Also,
there is a possibility that such manipulations can result in increased
incidennce of cancer, since telomerase shortening may serve as a fuse
to prevent the uncontrolled replication of potentially cancerous cells.

Shankar




>
>On Wed, 20 Dec 1995, Brian wrote:
>
>> Is there any serious science reviews about the potential for immortality. I 
>> don't mean crackpot stuff or third grade journal articles. I saw the one in 
>> LIFE magazine a few years ago, but that was just sort of a random description 
>> of science projects that may be applied toward that goal.  I mean physicists 
>> talk theoretically about concepts and potentialities that may seem ridiculous 
>> to contemplate now, but this has shown itself to be a great way to gain some 
>> inspiration and imagination. Why can't biologists do this? They seem so afraid 
>> to talk about it seriously.
>> 
>> 




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