Scientists turn back the clock on ageing, could this be the key to eternal youth?
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In a groundbreaking new study, Australian molecular biologist David Sinclair and his team have found a way to reset ageing cells in mice, effectively making them young again.
The team used proteins that can turn an adult cell into a stem cell, and applied them to mice that were beginning to show signs of age. The results were astonishing – the mice regained their vision, their strength, and their energy.
In one of the most incredible examples, two mice sit side by side. One is the picture of youth, the other grey and feeble. Yet they are brother and sister, born from the same litter - only one has been genetically altered to age faster.
Dr Sinclair, who had been doing research on how to reverse ageing for the past two decades, said: “It’s a permanent reset, as far as we can tell, and we think it may be a universal process that could be applied across the body to reset our age.”
“If we reverse ageing, these diseases should not happen."
“We have the technology today to be able to go into your hundreds without worrying about getting cancer in your 70s, heart disease in your 80s and Alzheimer’s in your 90s."
“This is the world that is coming. It’s literally a question of when and for most of us, it’s going to happen in our lifetimes.”
Australian molecular biologist David Sinclair cited that one of the underlying causes of most diseases is ageing. Credit: Getty Images.
Whitney Casey, one of the investors who partnered with Dr Sinclair, emphasised that one of the researcher's missions is to "make ageing a disease".
She said: “His research shows you can change ageing to make lives younger for longer."
Dr Sinclair said that modern medicine fails to address the underlying cause of most diseases "which is ageing itself”.
“We know that when we reverse the age of an organ like the brain in a mouse, the diseases of ageing then go away. Memory comes back, there is no more dementia,” Ms Casey added.
“I believe that in the future, delaying and reversing ageing will be the best way to treat the diseases that plague most of us.”
Dr Sinclair also cited a Japanese researcher who won a Nobel Prize for his miraculous discovery also known as "Yamanaka factors".
Shinya Yamanaka has discovered a way to reprogram human adult cells so that they behave like embryonic stem cells.
This means that they have the ability to develop into any cell in the body.
However, there's a catch: when adult cells are fully switched back to stem cells via Yamanaka's method, they lose their identity. They forget they are blood cells, heart cells, or skin cells.
This makes them perfect for rebirth as "cell du jour," but lousy at rejuvenation.
These two mice are from the same litter but one was genetically altered, revealing how the experiment can impact the natural ageing process. Credit: CNN.
So what does this mean for us? Researchers are now working on a way to help cells remember who they are, even as they age backward.
And fortunately for us, labs around the world are working on a way to expunge the signs of ageing, and they may have found a solution – albeit with a downside.
A study published in 2016 showed that exposing genetically aged mice to four main Yamanaka factors could erase the signs of ageing, without erasing the cells’ identity. However, in certain situations, the altered mice developed cancerous tumours.
So, researchers are looking for a safer alternative, and they may have found one...
Geneticist Yuancheng Lu has chosen three of the four Yamanaka factors and genetically added them to a harmless virus.
The virus is designed to deliver the rejuvenating Yamanaka factors to damaged retinal ganglion cells at the back of an aged mouse’s eye.
After injecting the virus into the eye, the pluripotent genes are then switched on by feeding the mouse an antibiotic.
Dr Sinclair quipped: “The antibiotic is just a tool. It could be any chemical really, just a way to be sure the three genes are switched on."
“Normally they are only on in very young developing embryos and then turn off as we age.”
Incredibly, the damaged neurons in the eyes of mice injected with the three cells rejuvenated and have grown new axons, or projections from the eye into the brain.
Dr Sinclair said that he is poised that the process can be done in the muscles and brains of mice and could even work on rejuvenating a mouse's entire body.
He said: "That discovery indicates there is a 'back-up copy' of youthfulness information stored in the body."
“I call it the information theory of ageing.”
“It’s a loss of information that drives ageing cells to forget how to function, to forget what type of cell they are. And now we can tap into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.”
This study could be a major breakthrough in the fight against ageing, and could one day lead to a way to reset our cells and turn back the clock on our own ageing process.
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