Adenoviral human telomerase reverse transcriptase dramatically improves ischemic wound healing without detrimental immune response in an aged rabbit model.

Chronic ischemic wounds are major clinical problems, and are especially prevalent in elderly patients. Management of these wounds costs billions of dollars annually in the United States. Because of the severe impairment in tissue repair, ischemic wounds among the aged are major challenges for physicians.

Enhanced long-term survival, but no increase in replicative capacity, following retroviral transduction of human cord blood CD34+ cells with human telomerase reverse transcriptase.

Overexpression of telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) can immortalize some primary human mesenchymal cells. We investigated whether retrovirally-mediated expression of hTERT in CD34+ umbilical cord blood (UCB) cells can extend the replicative lifespan of human hematopoietic progenitor cells. Overexpression of hTERT did not immortalize these cells but did lead to enhanced survival of mature hematopoietic cells.

Generation of hepatocyte-like cells from human embryonic stem cells.

Use of human hepatocytes for therapeutic and drug discovery applications is hampered by limited tissue source and the inability of hepatocytes to proliferate and maintain function long term in vitro. Human embryonic stem (hES) cells are immortal and pluripotent and may provide a cell source for functional human hepatocytes. We report here that hES cells can be induced to differentiate into hepatocyte-like cells.

Dendritic cells reconstituted with human telomerase gene induce potent cytotoxic T-cell response against different types of tumors.

Human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) is the catalytic component of a functional telomerase complex, which is important in maintaining cell immortality. In most normal human adult cells, the expression of telomerase is very low and/or transient. In contrast, almost 90% of human tumors express a relatively high level of telomerase implying the possibility of using hTERT as a universal candidate tumor antigen.

In vitro differentiation capacity of telomerase immortalized human RPE cells.

Purpose: To investigate conditions promoting the differentiation of cultured human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells and assess the differentiation potential of telomerase-immortalized RPE cells.

Methods: Serially passaged RPE 340 (parental) cells have limited replicative ability and senesce after 50 to 60 population doublings (PD)s. RPE 340 cells transfected with the catalytic component of human telomerase (hTERT) have an extended lifespan.