Vittorio Sebastiano, PhD

Epigenetic Reprogramming of cellular Aging: a novel paradigm to treat aging and aging-associated diseases

Aging is characterized by a gradual loss of function occurring at the molecular, cellular, tissue and organismal levels. At the chromatin level, aging is associated with the progressive accumulation of errors in the epigenetic program (epigenetic drift) that eventually leads to a broad spectrum of phenomena including abnormal gene regulation, stem cell exhaustion, senescence, and deregulated cell/tissue homeostasis. Work developed in Dr. Sebastiano’s lab shows that transient expression of reprogramming factors, promote a rapid reversal of multiple hallmarks of physiological aging in many distinct human cell types isolated from aged individuals, reduces inflammation, and restores youthful regenerative response to aged, human stem cells, in each case without abolishing cellular identity. Dr. Sebastiano’s method, which is named Epigenetic Reprogramming of Aging (ERA), paves the way to a novel, groundbreaking, translatable strategy for cell rejuvenation treatment. The scope of this proposal is to understand how, mechanistically, ERA works.