Turn.bio is Gary Hudson's latest company, now that others are running the day to day development at Oisin Biotechnologies. The Turn.bio staff are working on a particular take on the idea of inducing pluripotence in cells in vivo as a form of compensatory therapy for aging. This is a concept that struck me as being fairly crazy the first time I saw it discussed in a research publication. It is certainly possible to reliably reprogram somatic cells of near any sort into what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells, capable of differentiating into any type of cell. This is the foundation for the production of arbitrary cell types for transplantation. But doing it inside a living animal? Surely a recipe for cancer and more cancer, as the pluripotent cells replicate uncontrollably outside the normal restraints of a structured tissue.

Oddly, however, the initial outcome in mice was not cancer and more cancer. It was a set of benefits to health and tissue function that looked a lot like the results of stem cell therapies, most likely achieved via the signaling produced by the newly induced pluripotent stem cells. It remains to be seen what the risks look like over the long term, but the result prompted some interest and following studies in the research community. Given this, what if it were possible to guide cells only part-way into a pluripotent state, and only temporarily, generating beneficial signals for a time without any meaningful risk of pluripotent cells floating around in tissues for the long term? That is what the Turn.bio staff are working on. The result may be a more controllable, guided way to achieve the benefits of stem cell therapy without the stem cells. The paper here is the basis for their current development program.

Transient non-integrative nuclear reprogramming promotes multifaceted reversal of aging in human cells