Renowned Harvard geneticist George Church said at a science conference in La Jolla on Thursday that reversing aging in humans is plausible based on research that’s been done on small animals.

“Reversal is something that has been demonstrated in a number of different animals in a number of different ways,” said Church, a keynote speaker at the Future of Genomic Medicine conference. " I think that’s going to translate into larger animals and humans. We won’t know until we try. But we trying 65 different genes in different combinations to see if we can reproduce the aging reversal that we’ve seen in small animals.

“We don’t know what (age reversal) would mean in terms of human years. Animals have had their life extended by factors of two to 10. That seems too good to be true for humans.”

Church, who helped organize the Human Genome Project, says the focus should be on dealing with the actual factors that cause people to age.


“A lot of the drugs in development are aimed at effects, those things that are downstream of the cause of age,” said Church, 61. “The real cause is probably genetic ... We’re trying to get at those causes and reverse those. We’re talking about reversing the epigenetic changes that are at the nucleus of every cell.”

He said that aging should be thought of as a program that might be reversed, noting, “If we could take one of my skin cells and turn it into an embryo-like cell and turn it back into a skin cell it has reset almost all of the developmental indications of age. We have 65 gene therapies that are being test in mice and larger animals. If they go well we will go straight into human trials. That could be as little as two years ...

“I don’t think it is about stalling or curing, its about reversing. Curing gives you the impression of immortality. Stalling gives you the impression that you’ll be 85 forever, which is not great.”

As Church spoke Thursday, a company he co-founded, Veritas Genetics of Boston, was formally announcing that it can sequence and interpret a person’s entire genome for $999. The service, which has not been approved by the FDA, is aimed at consumers.


Later in the day, Anne Wojcicki, chief executive of 23andMe, said that her direct-to-consumer DNA analytics company has been making a strong comeback. Three years ago, the FDA ordered 23andMe to stop marketing the health portion of its personal genetics analysis kits, claiming that the tests were of questionable scientific value. The company has since obtained FDA approval for a limited number of genetic tests.

“We believe that people can understand (their genetic data), and that they should be able to access it easily,” Wojcicki said at the Future of Genomic Medicine conference.