I’ve been really interested in techniques which reverse the specialization of cells, especially work around inducing pluripotency in existing cells. Outside of mature red blood cells, nearly every cell in the body has all of the instructions necessary to devolve into a pluripotent state, and most research I’ve read indicates that those pluripotent cells will integrate into their new environment and induce the necessary connections to support itself (e.g. induce the formation of new neurons in brains).
Is it possible to reboot brains altogether into a “clean”/”healthy” state with a generalized treatment? Imagine a “Brain Wipe” or “Benjamin Button” type of effect (could this even work without doing full body regression?) where TBI’s could be injected locally with a regressor which would allow new connections to form more quickly around lesion sites.
I suspect that in order to make something like this work, we’d need to deploy a package for every single cell type we are trying to revert. Right now the only reference I have for this mechanic are monoclonals like dostarlimab, and the effect of drugs of this class seems to be gated by how precisely the “roll back code” matches it’s cellular target.
The weirdest part of this looking at the results from recent cancer studies, it seems possible that we could “roll back” certain areas of a brain without the individual even being aware of the change. It’s exciting as a potential treatment for comprehension issues including dementias. Interesting to think about.
Edit: Thinking about that study a bit more, is senescence actually programmed at all? It seems like PD-1/LPD-1 production is an immunological reaction to “life”?
Brain Repair: Gatekeeping astrocyte identity – This has been bugging me since the direct inducement studies were published. Astrocytes are further down the glial specialization tree, direct conversion to neurons shouldn’t be possible. Epithelial cells are the first specialization, and even those have to be regressed to make neurons. Still tracking this.