Thanks to the implementation and use of proteins that make it possible to convert an adult cell into a stem cell, researchers from the laboratory of molecular biologist David Sinclair, from Harvard Medical School, in the United States, managed to rejuvenate mice in an incredible way. .
For a long time, different investigations have tried to find a way to stop the inevitable human aging and now with this discovery and progress in science, the step taken is something unprecedented and, above all, historical.
“It’s a permanent reset, as far as we know, and we think it may be a universal process that could be applied throughout the body to reset our age,” said Sinclair, who has been studying rejuvenation for more than two decades.
first tests
In 2020, the same working group managed to get old mice with damaged retinas to suddenly improve their sight, just like their own offspring. The Japanese biomedical doctor, Shinya Yamanaka, also reprogrammed adult human skin cells to behave like embryonic or pluripotent stem cells, capable of becoming any cell in the body.
The 2007 discovery earned the scientist a Nobel Prize, and his “induced pluripotent stem cells” soon became known as “Yamanaka factors.” However, the cells lost their identity, so they were useless for rejuvenation.
Research
The process took three of the four factors and genetically added them to a harmless virus designed to deliver Yamanaka’s rejuvenating factors to damaged retinal ganglion cells in the back of an elderly mouse’s eye.
After injecting the virus into the eye, the pluripotent genes were activated by feeding the mouse an antibiotic. Damaged neurons in the eyes of mice injected with the three cells rejuvenated, even growing new axons or projections from the eye to the brain.
“Somehow the cells know that the body can reboot itself and which genes should be active when they were young. We think we’re tapping into an ancient regeneration system that some animals use: when you cut off a salamander’s limb, the limb grows back. A fish’s tail will grow back; a finger of a mouse will grow again”, indicated the specialist.
The expert is optimistic when considering that they will be able to replicate the rejuvenation process in any animal and even in a human being. “We have done it in a mouse. There is no reason I can think of why it shouldn’t work on a person.”