In lab testing, this had dramatic effects on progeria, a premature aging disease. Mice treated with SATI lived about 45 percent longer while seeing reduced aging effects. That would translate to over a decade for a human affected by the same condition.

As is often the case with gene editing treatments, there’s still work to be done. The Salk team wanted to make SATI more efficient by boosting the number of cells that can incorporate the healthier DNA. The lab experiment was also a proof of concept, and there’s a long road between that and clinical trials. If it works as hoped, though, it could help doctors mitigate (or ideally, eliminate) a wide variety of mutation-based diseases.