David A. Sinclair

New Capabilities

Leading the scientific vision behind the first human reprogramming trial

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka showed that four genes could rewind an adult cell all the way back to an embryonic-like state. Twenty years later, a stripped-down version of that technique is being injected into human eyes for the first time. Life Biosciences, a Boston biotech co-founded by Harvard aging researcher David Sinclair, has begun dosing glaucoma patients with ER-100, a gene therapy that delivers three of Yamanaka's four reprogramming factors to retinal cells — with a built-in off switch controlled by the common antibiotic doxycycline.

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