Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — In Boston labs, old, blind mice have regained their sight, developed smarter, younger brains, and built healthier muscle tissue and kidneys. In contrast, young mice experience premature aging. This had devastating consequences for almost every tissue in her body.
“Experiments show that aging is a reversible process that can be pushed back and forth at will,” said anti-aging expert David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School’s Blavatnik Institute and director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Geriatric Research Biology.
Sinclair, lead author of a new paper showcasing the work of his lab and international scientists, added that our bodies contain a backup copy of our youth, as they can be stimulated to regenerate.
The joint experiments, first published Thursday in the journal Cell, challenge the scientific belief that aging is caused by genetic mutations that damage our DNA, creating an arena of damaged cellular tissue that can lead to deterioration, disease and death.
Jae Hyun Yang, a genetics research fellow in Sinclair’s lab and co-author of the paper, predicts that the findings will “change the way we look at the aging process, and the way we approach the treatment of aging-related diseases.”
Epigenome changes control aging
While DNA can be seen as the system of the body, epigenome is the programme.
Above genes are proteins and chemicals that sit like freckles on each gene, waiting to tell the gene “what to do, where to do it, when to do it,” according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.
And the genome literally turns genes on and off. This process can be caused by pollution, environmental toxins, and human behaviors, such as smoking.
“The cell panics, and the proteins that normally control genes get distracted by having to go and repair DNA, and then they don’t all find their way back,” Sinclair explained.
In other words, cellular pieces lose their way home, just like people with Alzheimer’s disease.
“The surprising result is that there is a backup copy of the software in the body that you can reset,” he said.
Sinclair continued: “We explain why this software is corrupted and how we can restart the system by hitting the reset switch, which restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it were young.”
He explained that it does not matter if the body is 50 or 75 years old, healthy or diseased. Once this process has begun, “the body will then remember how to rejuvenate and become young again.”
years of research
Sinclair began the research as a graduate student, part of a team at MIT that discovered genes to control aging in yeast.
He said that this gene is present in all creatures, so there must be a way to do the same thing in people.
Sinclair decided to test this theory. He set out to try to speed up the aging of mice without causing mutations.
With the help of other scientists, Sinclair and his team at Harvard University were able to determine the age of brain tissue, eyes, muscles, skin and kidneys in mice.
At one year old, the mice seemed to behave twice their age.
When you’re young again
It’s time to reverse the process now.
Yuansheng Lu, a geneticist in Sinclair’s lab, created a combination of 3 out of 4 “Yamanaka factors”, which are adult human skin cells that have been reprogrammed to behave like embryonic or pluripotent stem cells, and are capable of developing into any cell in the body.
The mixture was injected into damaged retinal ganglion cells at the back of the eyes of blind mice, and operated by feeding the mice antibiotics.
And an antibiotic is just a tool. It could be any chemical really, it’s just a way to make sure all three genes are turned on.
Finally, the mice regained most of their sight.
Next, the team treated brain, muscle and kidney cells, restoring them to much smaller levels, according to the study.
It is worth noting that billions of dollars are being paid to anti-aging, funding all sorts of methods to turn back the clock.
Sinclair said his team reset the cells in mice several times, proving that aging could be reversed more than once.
However, it may be decades before any human anti-aging clinical trials begin.
If the trial is successful and effective, an application will be submitted for federal approval.