It won’t be everyone’s wish, but it may be the wish of many: to reverse aging. Scientists recently approached this possibility with a clinical trial performed on mice.
In the future, they can work to see if the techniques can be applied to the human body.
Aging and its consequences are realities that many want to get rid of. Therefore, for a long time, scientists have been looking for a way to reverse the process and ensure more joviality for those interested. Despite procedures that guarantee a more youthful appearance, there is still no effective method guaranteeing the reversal of cellular aging.
Now, according to CNN, molecular biologist David Sinclair, with his team at Harvard Medical School, has succeeded in reversing aging in mice, using proteins capable of transforming an adult cell into a stem cell. In a first study carried out in December 2020, the team had succeeded in restoring the retinas damaged by the age of mice, improving their vision at the level of newborns.
It’s permanent restoration as far as we can tell, and we believe it can be a universal process that might be applied throughout the body to restore our age.
If we reverse aging, these diseases should not occur. We now have the technology to be able to go through the hundreds without worrying regarding having cancer at age 70, heart disease at age 80, and Alzheimer’s disease at age 90.
David Sinclair told CNN.
David Sinclair, molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School
The cause of most diseases is inevitably aging. According to Sinclair, modern medicine ignores this root cause and focuses only on treating illnesses when they arise. Now, with the research and results obtained by the Harvard team, “we know that reversing the age of an organ such as the brain of a mouse, eliminates the diseases caused by old age”.
In the future, we may be able to reverse aging
Sinclair’s team looked for a safer alternative to those previously found – which involved the formation of cancers, for example. In this case, the team chose three of the four Yamanaka factors and genetically added them to a harmless virus.
The virus was created to deliver these Yamanaka factors to the damaged retinal ganglion cells of an aged mouse. The result showed that damaged neurons in the eyes of mice injected with the three cells miraculously recovered (almost).
The team leader said they had been able to reverse the aging of the mice’s muscles and brains since the start of the study, and announced that they were now working on whole-body regeneration.
Later, and only time and study will dictate this possibility, scientists will work on applying these techniques to the human body.
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