The degenerative aging of the immune system is responsible for an enormous burden of disease and disability, from the pain of recurrent Herpes zoster and postherpetic neuralgia, to elevated rates of chronic urinary tract infections, to complications in wounds, pressure sores, ulcers, and surgical incisions. Most prominently, it underlies the meteoric rise in mortality from respiratory infections with age: influenza, pneumonia, and septicemia rise from being negligible causes of death in healthy middle-aged adults in the USA, to emerge amongst the top 10 causes of death in adults over the age of 55, with mortality rates climbing with each successive year of aging.

Zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) are engineered DNA-binding proteins with remarkable, highly programmable sequence-specificity. However, their widespread use has been slowed by licensing issues and the technical difficulty of synthesising new variants. A new platform, CoDA (context-dependent assembly), promises to make these exceptionally useful tools available to a far greater number of researchers.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are among the most exciting recent developments in biomedicine, overcoming immunological and ethical issues associated with the use of embryonic stem cells (ESCs). However, reasonable doubt remains regarding whether iPSCs do in fact have the full biological and therapeutic potential of ESCs. Work at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute recently produced the first “all-iPSC” live mice, a milestone on the road to establishing full equivalence between the two methods.

The clearance of beta-amyloid (Abeta) and other protein aggregates by immunotherapy is a key rejuvenation biotechnology to restore youthful function to aging brains, especially those with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders. Initial trials using anti-Abeta vaccines have demonstrated concomitant reductions in early-stage tau aggregates, but not in mature neurofibrillary tangles, suggesting that such vaccines would be optimally deployed much earlier in the disease process – or in combination with anti-tau vaccines.

Neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs – cytoplasmic inclusions composed of abnormal species of tau protein) accumulate in the aging brain, particularly in neurodegenerative disease, where they are closely associated with areas of neuronal death. The urgency of tackling tau accumulation in particular has become more apparent after recent studies revealed that clearance of beta-amyloid alone achieves only moderate clinical benefits, with continued pathology attributed in particular to persistent NFTs.