Ageing: cell-rejuvenating therapy administered for the first time
Life Biosciences has announced that it has administered its partial epigenetic reprogramming therapy to the very first human
Key points
- Experts' warnings
A patient with glaucoma walks into a clinic, receives an injection in the eye and starts taking an antibiotic. We do not know his name. We know that he has agreed to be the first human in history to receive a treatment designed to rejuvenate his cells and that, from this moment on, he carries in his eye three genes capable, at least in mice and monkeys, of reversing cellular ageing. Nothing extraordinary, on the surface. Everything extraordinary, in essence.
Although this is a Phase 1 clinical trial – registered with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), with a precise protocol and measurable objectives – what is being tested touches on one of medicine’s oldest dreams: making old cells young again.
The Boston-based biotechnology company Life Biosciences has treated the first participant in a clinical trial using a gene therapy – known as ER-100 – in an attempt to reverse the damage to the optic nerve caused by glaucoma. The mechanism is based on the activation of three genes that appear to be capable of ‘partially reprogramming’ aged cells, causing them to behave as if they were younger.
An idea that originated in *Nature* in 2020
The story of ER-100 began in a laboratory at Harvard Medical School. In 2020, the team led by Professor David Sinclair – co-founder of Life Biosciences – published a groundbreaking study in the journal *Nature*: by activating just three of the four so-called ‘Yamanaka factors’ (Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4) in mice with damaged optic nerves, the researchers succeeded in promoting neuronal regeneration and reversing vision loss. The study made the cover of Nature and sparked global interest in partial epigenetic reprogramming as a basis for new gene therapies.
Since that publication, Life Biosciences has spent years working to translate those findings into a drug suitable for human use. In 2024, the company presented new data at the annual congress of the American Association of Ophthalmology in Chicago, confirming the results in non-human primates and expanding knowledge on dosage and treatment timing. On 28 January 2026, the FDA authorised the start of clinical trials, paving the way for the only cell rejuvenation therapy using epigenetic reprogramming ever to reach human subjects.
