Revel Pharmaceuticals Uses AI And Directed Evolution To Engineer CMLase From Geothermal Bacteria. Enzyme Slashes CML By 70% In Human Aortic Tissue Published In Nature Communications August 2026
According to SingularityHub, researchers at Revel Pharmaceuticals in San Francisco have engineered a synthetic enzyme called CMLase that strips advanced glycation end products (AGEs) nicknamed the body’s “rust” from aging human tissue, reducing AGE levels in a 75-year-old’s aortic tissue to those typically seen in a 30-year-old.
AGEs form when sugars react with proteins inside the body over decades, stiffening tissues, triggering inflammation and raising the risk of heart disease, diabetes, kidney damage and cognitive decline. The damage was widely believed to be irreversible. To find a way to reverse it, the team looked outside the human body: microbes that decompose human remains must harbour enzymes that break down AGE-laden proteins.
Using AI to screen DNA sequences from over 50,000 microbes, they identified a candidate enzyme from geothermal hot spring bacteria. They then applied directed evolution; the Nobel Prize-winning technique that mimics natural selection at speed through five rounds and over 500 million variants, producing CMLase: an enzyme more than ten times more efficient than its ancestor.
In human aortic tissue from a 75-year-old donor, CMLase slashed CML by roughly 70 percent. Skin and eye lens proteins also showed significant reductions. “This work establishes that damage to aging proteins previously thought to be irreversible can be repaired,” the team wrote in Nature Communications.
The body is not a one-way clock. CMLase suggests the hands can move backwards. Check out our previous coverage of science on The Trusted Times.
