The germline/soma dichotomy: implications for aging and degenerative disease

Open Access Review by Michael D West, Francois Binette, David Larocca, Karen B Chapman, Charles Irving & Hal Sternberg discusses potential industrial-scale cell-based regenerative therapies such as transcriptional reprogramming or hESC engineering for the treatment of age-related pathologies. Division of human somatic cells results in telomere shortening and subsequently senescence, meaning that the cells are less able to respond to disease or injury, and age-related pathologies may develop. However, pluripotent stem cells cultured in vitro appear to maintain long telomere length owing to relatively high levels of telomerase activity, which the somatic cells lose upon cell division. In this Open...