What do you think about a "WILT light", meaning, deleting the telomerase gene only AFTER the onset of a cancer? Or rather, why didn't I see this proposal mentioned yet by Dr. Aubrey de Grey?
The point is, this would offer no advantages over "full" WILT, other than it could be available much earlier, exactly to those cancer patients who'd need WILT the most anyhow.
My basic assumptions why this would make sense are as follows:
1. WILT as a response to cancer instead of standard chemo would be appliable as soon as targeted whole-body gene deletion works in a sufficiently thorough way in humans (5-10 years? earlier?)
2. Researching and implementing WILT would make a great case (and money) even for the pharma industry, as this could cure some cancers better than current chemotherapy, once gene deletion works better. Paradixically, maybe the development of WILT, otherwise the last one of the SENS interventions that you could safely do for healthy people, might be sped up by researching it for this earlier usage.
3. It would make sense to apply WILT soon instead of in 20+ years in this case, even without perfect stem-cell replacement therapies, in any cancer which has a prognosis of less than 10 years survival with the best then-available chemotherapy. For example, brain tumours or pancreatic cancer might be cases where after-onset WILT beats any chemotherapy. (And while ultimate stem cell depletion by WILT may be more severe than by high-dose chemo, it would not be immediate -- with WILT there would be up to 10 years time to improve stem-cell replacements for cancer patients). However, early WILT would not become the standard option e.g. for people with hodgkin's disease for whom prognosis is very good with existing chemo.
4. I'm aware of the fact that this "after-onset" WILT may not be perfect against cancer in the way that preventive WILT is, as cancer cells may evolutionarily outsmart (as detailed in Ending Aging) the vehicle for the targeted gene deletion of telomerase, but it would probably still be much more effective than standard chemo, I assume a mutant cancer cell building resistance to a xenobiotic substance is much easier and more often observed than becoming resistant to targeted gene therapy.
5. I'm aware that some rare, aggressively growing tumors may grow too big before being detected and put to a halt by WILT. However, the point is, most of the common cancers won't kill you right away, in most cases there is at least time for mild palliative chemotherapy to stunt growth, until WILT effects have set in, even with moderately-fast growing cancer. Metastasis, or anything else except life-threatening organ damage is no problem for WILT, given that thorough deletion of telomerase works (excluding cases of ALT). Hence, given the relatively low overall prevalance of cancer, and the additional rarity of very fast growing cancer, an early form of "WILT light" could be rather efficient in preventing most premature deaths from cancers in which prognosis is less than 10 years. (And I'd hope that once WILT demonstrates it can do that, the war on aging gets rolling fast enough to offer sufficient stem-cell treatment to all early-WILT-treated cancer survivors).
6. Finally, preventive WILT might be an early option, if it is done in a tissue-specific fashion, for some tissues most at risk of cancer. For example, WILT limited to breast tissue in women with bad BRCA genes, or prostate tissue in men over 50. This could not cover all bases, as intact stem cells/telomerase are vital, e.g. in the gut or lungs, but not in all tissues most commonly responsible for cancers.
What do you think?
Edited by mixter, 07 June 2008 - 07:30 PM.
