The mutation behind a premature-ageing disease is corrected in a living animal
Progeria is a disease in which one wrong letter in one gene makes children age fast and die in their teens. In 2021 a Harvard and National Institutes of Health group used a base editor, a tool that changes a single letter of DNA without cutting it, carried into mice with the human mutation by a harmless virus. One dose corrected the letter in roughly a fifth to three-fifths of the cells in various organs (about a quarter in the main artery) six months later, and the mice lived about 2.4 times as long as untreated mice. It is the clearest case of repairing a single ageing-related mutation in a living body. The children's version of the disease has an approved drug (lonafarnib, 2020) that treats its effects, but no person has had the mutation itself corrected.
What would count
A living animal carrying a mutation that causes premature ageing, or an ageing-related disease, has the mutation corrected in a substantial share of the cells of an affected organ by a treatment given after birth, and lives longer or stays healthier for it, in a peer-reviewed report. The first-human rung is the same correction, measured, in a person. For the clinic rung: a regulator approves a gene-correction therapy for such a disease.
Who settles it: Peer-reviewed reports; the trial registry and report when a first person is treated; the regulator's approval record for the clinic rung.
Where it stands
Shown in animals. Reached 6 January 2021, on the record of doi.org. Next rung within 5 to 20 years.
When it reaches the clinic: the project's estimate
This is the one thing on this page that is a judgment rather than a record. The project's estimate of the year it reaches the clinic is 2038, no earlier than 2032 and no later than 2080; the model draws from that range every run, with the likely year the most probable draw. Set 16 October 2026, a first pass awaiting an outside review.
| Rung | No earlier than | Most likely | No later than | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First human | 2027 | 2029 | 2040 | |
| In clinical use | 2032 | 2038 | 2080 | feeds the year at the top |
Why. The 2025 one-patient case shows the tool can be made and dosed in a person within months when the disease is grave enough. The likely year for the first human assumes a progeria child is treated under a compassionate or single-patient route around 2029; the clinic rung, an approval for a premature-ageing or ageing-related disease, assumes a small trial and a rare-disease approval in the late 2030s. The earliest is the 2025 pace repeated; the latest allows for the delivery problem (getting the editor into enough cells of the right organs) stalling the field.
Changes to this record
None since it was written on 16 October 2026. Every change to the stage or the estimate lands here with its date, the old value, the new one and the reason, and a change to the estimate never happens because a number looked wrong: it needs a dated reason and a source.
The last readings
- 17 October 2026 Quiet
Nothing in the window 2026-10-10 to 2026-10-17 was seen, and nothing bearing on this leaf's first-human rung, which needs the mutation behind a premature-ageing disease corrected and measured in a person. This verdict is weaker than the others and should not be relied on: the turn's shared web-search budget ran out before any search aimed at this leaf could be run, so it rests on two borrowed searches, which the brief says do not count towards the floor of two. No search was run for a progeria base-editing trial, for the single-patient route the leaf's estimate turns on, or for the group that published the 2021 mouse result.
What the story so far says about it
No promise, self-experiment or logged paper names this one yet.
Notes
The first person to have a single mutation corrected inside their body by a base editor was a baby with a liver enzyme disease, treated in 2025 with a therapy made for him alone; that is not a premature-ageing disease, so it does not settle this leaf's first-human rung, but it shows the tool works in a person. A separate leaf on this branch tracks gene editing inside a person's body for an age-related disease.