26 September 2026
Heard in AI
Daily email

A story we follow

Life Biosciences Doses First Patient in ER-100 Aging-Reprogramming Trial

Tracks human testing of partial Yamanaka-factor epigenetic reprogramming, including Life Biosciences' ER-100 optic-neuropathy trial and claims about reversing retinal disease or aging in cells.

A story page follows one specific event across podcast discussions, with an overview and a timeline of what changed. It updates when new episodes discuss the event, and you can get those updates by email or push. How our formats work

Updated

Overview

David Friedberg said partial doses of Yamanaka factors can move a cell's gene switches back toward a younger version of the same cell type, a field he called epigenetic reprogramming. He said treated mice have lived to the equivalent of more than 100 years and that monkey tissue lost wrinkles. He also said one of David Sinclair's companies had dosed the retina to reverse blindness in people with a retinopathy. Friedberg treated that as proof that aging can be reset in cells, but warned that too large a reset could make a cell embryonic and cancerous. In a later Moonshots AMA, Peter Diamandis gave a more cautious account of the trial. He described ER-100 as an adeno-associated virus injection of three Yamanaka factors and said it is in a phase one safety trial in humans, with efficacy data still to come. He said it was being used in NAION and macular degeneration, and that Sinclair expects it to work for other eye conditions. He offered it to a caller with the inherited retinal disease choroideremia, reasoning that late-onset vision loss reflects gene expression that could be turned back. Life Biosciences' public announcement reports first-patient dosing in a phase one safety trial in optic neuropathies, namely open-angle glaucoma and NAION, using three factors. It does not list macular degeneration or inherited retinal diseases such as choroideremia, and no restoration of sight has been shown. Choroideremia comes from an inherited gene mutation, which does not fit Peter's age-related gene-expression framing. Open questions remain about when efficacy data will appear and whether the approach reaches other eye conditions.

What changed

Dates show when each podcast discussion was published.

  1. New information

    On Moonshots, Peter Diamandis described ER-100 as an adeno-associated virus injection of three Yamanaka factors. He said it is in a phase one human safety trial, with efficacy data still to come. He said it was being used in NAION and macular degeneration and that David Sinclair expects it to work for other eye conditions. He suggested it to a caller with the inherited retinal disease choroideremia. The company's announcement names glaucoma and NAION, not macular degeneration or inherited retinal disease.

  2. New information

    David Friedberg said a David Sinclair-linked company had begun dosing the human retina to reverse blindness, presenting epigenetic reprogramming with Yamanaka factors as already in people. That claim goes beyond the public first-patient safety dosing reported for the ER-100 optic-neuropathy trial.

Podcast discussions

Sources

  1. 01
  2. 02
  3. 03

Our coverage

Science & Medicine Briefing

A cell the size of Manhattan: how AI could search for age reversal without a full theory of the cell

On The Diary of a CEO, investor David Friedberg described a cell as a city of 10 billion workers and argued that AI lets researchers screen a million protein ideas on computers before touching a lab bench. His worked example is partial epigenetic reprogramming — and a June 2026 announcement shows that work has reached a first safety trial in human eyes, not restored sight.

5 min read

Version history

  • 26 Sep 2026 · Version 2

    On Moonshots, Peter Diamandis described ER-100 as an adeno-associated virus injection of three Yamanaka factors. He said it is in a phase one human safety trial, with efficacy data still to come. He said it was being used in NAION and macular degeneration and that David Sinclair expects it to work for other eye conditions. He suggested it to a caller with the inherited retinal disease choroideremia. The company's announcement names glaucoma and NAION, not macular degeneration or inherited retinal disease.

Your privacy

Necessary

Keep forms secure, remember your cookie choice and support editor sign-in.

Always on

Help us see which articles get read and whether readers return. With your permission, we use a random browser ID. We store statistics on our own server for up to 180 days.

Refusing analytics will not change your access to articles or the daily email.

Cookie details · Privacy