In the 90s, when I had more money, I did some angel investing. One of the companies I invested in, Sierra Sciences was started by an old friend and business associate, Dan Fylstra, who had also founded Personal Software/VisiCorp, the company that sold VisiCalc.

Sierra Sciences was also founded by Bill Andrews, who had done important work on Telomeres at Geron. Together, we hoped to follow promising leads on now to safely lengthen the telomere.

Telomeres are strands on the end of chromosomes. Each time a chromosome is duplicated, they shorten, acting like a decremating "counter." After so many duplications (50 to 60) the telomere is too short and the cell can't divide. That gives a fresh gamete 2^50 cells to produce, which is a ton, but of course we are the result of highly specialized duplication so it turns out to not be enough. Telomeres are in part a defence against cancer. If a cancer forms, and starts duplicatating like crazy, it hits the limit of the telomere and stops -- unless it has found a way to generate Telomerase, the enzyme that resets the counter. We need that enzyme in order to make babies, and certain types of immune cells and IIRC marrow, but in most of our cells it is repressed, in order to stop cancer.

They've known how to turn on telomerase and make immortal cell lines for a while, but this would increase the risk of cancer. The trick is to lengthen them just a bit. This would, in theory, give you some of the healing ability of a baby. Old people's skin wounds heal very slowly because their cells are all divided out -- they can't produce endless new cells quickly.

A study a few years ago showed that people with naturally longer telomeres (just a bit longer) live about 4 years longer on average than those with shorter ones. That's a big difference, and we hoped even a larger effect could be generated. We identified the sites that repress telomerase and found antagonists for the chemicals binding those sites.

But, after several years and a lot of money, have not yet found a drug to make the magic happen. The major investors have decided not to go forward. The company is for sale. While the investors won't make much, if anything from it, I hope it is bought not just for the lab equipment but by somebody interested in carrying on the research. Most of the investors not only knew that anti-aging drugs would be very lucrative, they sort of hoped to be on the customer list someday.

It generated some interesting issues. Getting approval for such drugs would be a hard slog. It was debated that an animal drug be developed, as people would pay a lot for longer lived pets and racehorses. I was scared of this, knowing that humans would take the animal drug in desperation -- with possible scary results due to lack of testing and refinement. The other hope was for a topical skin cream that really made skin be younger, not just look younger. This would be medically valuable and of course sell a lot for cosmetic applications. But it's not to be for now.

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