Telomerase Expression in Human Cells!

[Doug Hosack]

tan at ack.net wrote:
>I didn't know they
>could be playing  around with telomerase in real live people with the
>possibility that the patients might all get  cancer.  That seems weird
>to say it was used in-vivo on human cells.  They must have been pretty
>sure it was safe


I'm sure that they wouldn't do any human testing before animal trials.
Since this is "the first in vivo data," it probably refers to "in mice."
Specifically, Geron researchers probably transplanted human cells expressing
telomerase into some strain of immunocompromised mice, such as SCID mice or
nude mice.  Technically, this would be *in vivo* expression of telomerase.
Since the immune systems of these mice could not reject the human cells, the
researchers could gather data about "cancer-associated physical and
biochemical characteristics."