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Genetic Linkage

From Rapid-Aging Disease to Common Heart Disease

Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the NIH, began pursuing a treatment for progeria, the rapid-aging disease, early in his career.
Last week I looked at how Dr. Francis Collins became involved in the quest to discover the genetic defect that causes the rapid-aging disorder Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome. Preliminary results of a possible drug therapy -- one originally developed to treat childhood brain cancer -- were about to be published. Dr. Collins isn’t on that paper, perhaps sidetracked with things like running the NIH.

We All Have Progerin
Between the progeria gene discovery in 2003 and the recent repurposed drug news lies perhaps the most important paper of all: a 2010 report comparing the arteries of two children with progeria who’d died of heart attacks – a girl just under age 10, and a boy aged 14 – to blood vessels from 29 people.  Read More 
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