FOREVER YOUNG

120 years in a young body – that is what scientists aim to give us. Many years of studies have taught them why we get old, and now, they are making youth elixirs with stem cells, special genes, and drugs that can keep us young throughout life.

Ageing is a disease. That’s what some scientists think. And diseases can be cured. Could there be a child alive today who will live to 130?

Avirus attack is something that most people would like to avoid, but in Madrid, a most welcome virus is spreading in 35 lab mice; a virus that makes them younger. The animals were well on in years, when they were infected, but already after two months, the signs of ageing slowly disappear. The mice’s bones strengthen, their blood sugar levels stabilize, and their muscles move with the accuracy of young mice. The virus has entered the mice’s cells, turning back the cells’ genetic clocks, so the animals not only get the strength of their youth back, they also live no less than 13 % longer.

The woman behind the experiment is molecular biologist María Blasco from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre. In 2012, when she injected her youth virus into the blood vessels of 35 mice, it was the beginning of a new era in age research.

So far, scientists have managed to increase people’s life expectancy by about 30 years via improved treatment of the diseases that kill us when we get old. Now, they aim to find a cure against old age itself. By preventing the body from developing diseases such as dementia, cancer, and arteriosclerosis, they aim to give us long lives in healthy bodies. The research of the past century has answered the question of why we get older, and now, scientists armed with stem cells and new gene therapies can reverse the processes that wear down the body from within. In labs throughout the world, several youth elixirs are under development. Very recently, scientists even discovered that the most promising cure against ageing has already been tested and sits in the medication cabinets of millions of people throughout the world

SCIENTISTS READ GENETIC CLOCKS

To beat death, scientists spent years trying to understand what old age is. They studied how, throughout life, we wear down our bodies and their cells, which slowly get to function ever more poorly, perform worse, and are affected by errors. After a long life, the heart will begin to pump more poorly, as the number of heart beats wear out the organ’s muscle cells. Similarly, the brain thinks more slowly and remembers more poorly, as neurons give in one by one. In the end, the body is so weak and sick that it dies. So, a youth pill must prevent cells of the entire body from decaying, which was the idea behind María Blasco’s experiment. In the lab, she designed a virus that infected all cells in a mouse and added an extra gene.

The cells of all mammals contain a genetic clock. At the end of our chromosomes, you will find telomeres, which become slightly shorter every time a cell divides. Consequently, the

length of the telomeres reveal the age of our cells. When the telomeres have been ”spent”, the cell dies, leaving the body weaker and older. However, the telomerase enzyme can extend our chromosomes, delaying cell death. Unfortunately, we do not have enough telomerase in our cells to overcome the ravages of time, and so, the chromosomes slowly become shorter, until we die.

María Blasco cheated old age by using virus to fill her test animals’ cells with extra copies of the gene that codes for telomerase. In this way, she slowed down the pace of the mice’s genetic clocks and prolonged their lives by almost six months. In humans, the effect would be like increasing life expectancy by 10 years to an average of 90.

44-YEAR-OLD IS 20 YEARS YOUNGER

One woman is so convinced that telomerase prolongs life that she has volunteered her body to the most recent experiments. 44-year-old Elizabeth Parris is the CEO of the American company BioViva, and in 2015, she flew to Columbia to undergo gene therapy with telomerase. According to the company’s website, the CEO’s telomeres are already 9 % longer, meaning that she is 20 years younger. However, there is no scientific documentation to support the claim.

CELL POWER PLANT CAUSES WRINKLES

Telomeres are not the only factors that control the decay of the human body. Inside our cells, you will also find small power plants, known as mitochondria, that produce energy for the cell, but also emit harmful waste products in the shape of free radicals. The chemical compounds break down proteins and harm

DNA. If they attack skin cells, we get wrinkles, if they affect the internal cell layer of blood vessels, we could develop arteriosclerosis, and if lung cells are filled with free radicals, they could mutate into cancer cells.

IMMUNE SYSTEM CONSUMES US

The antidote against free radicals is antioxidants which exist in fruit and vegetables. Antioxidants can tolerate attacks by free radicals and so protect a cell’s vulnerable DNA and proteins. Hence, they could be an efficient cure against the diseases that kill us, when we get older. Scientists have carried out numerous experiments with roundworms, fruit flies, mice, and rats, which were fed lots of antioxidants from vitamins, red wine, turmeric, etc. In several of the experiments, the animals lived about 10 % longer, but just as many had no effect.

Consequently, it was a dead end, until 2016, when scientist Gustavo Barja from the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, managed to defeat free radicals with controversial means. He halved the polluting effect of free radicals in the cells of middleaged mice by means of a drug that is already in use. Rapamycin is prescribed for patients who have received a new organ, and the drug makes sure that the body does not reject a newly-transplanted organ by dampening the immune system.

Another scientist, Richard Miller from the University of Michigan, used the same drug to prolong the lives of male mice by 23 %, whereas ”his” female mice lived no less than 26 % longer. And in Texas, a third team of scientists are testing the drug on Callithrix monkeys, before moving on to experiments with humans. They believe that they can use rapamycin to make a pill that can give us another 20 years of life.

VERY OLD PEOPLE HAVE YOUTH GENES

To scientists, rapamycin was a totally unexpected surprise, as it dampens the body’s defence against diseases. However, it turns out that the immune system plays a key role in the slower decay of the body. When the system repairs damage to organs or heals wounds, it triggers inflammation – a chain reaction in which a series of signal molecules replace each other to repair the damage. The reaction is indispensable, but unfortunately, it can get out of control, and permanent inflammation in the body could develop into severe diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

If scientists are to eliminate the major life style diseases, it will be wise to take a closer look at the immune system, and that was what Calogero Caruso from the University of Palermo, Italy, did in 2003, when he gathered 72 100+-year-old people to analyse their genes. He compared the genes to samples from people of the ages of 22-60 and discovered that the old people had special versions of two genes. One gene ”turns up” the IL- 10 neurotransmitter that dampens inflammation, whereas the other ”turns down” TNF-alpha, which boosts inflammation. Since then, other experiments have also demonstrated that substances which dampen

inflammation could give us longer lives, whereas those that boost them have the opposite effect. So, scientists have identified specific substances that not only fight old age, but also the diseases that follow from it. Several companies are now growing stem cells that both liberate and ”turn down” the very right substances. An American biotech company recently announced plans of extracting stem cells from our spinal marrow or fat deposits, growing them in labs, and injecting them into our blood vessels, halting all harmful inflammation.

EXISTING DRUG MAKES US YOUNGER

But much to their surprise, scientists have discovered that the most promising source of youth is a highly common one: the metformin diabetes drug.

In 2013, Kevin Struhl from the Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, discovered that the drug deactivates a number of genes that code for substances which boost inflammation. In the same year, another scientist, Rafael de Cabo from the National Institutes of Health in Baltimore, USA, demonstrated that if he fed mice a little metformin every day, they lived about two months longer than expected. However, the major eye opener came in 2014.

SCIENTISTS AIM TO GIVE US 30 YEARS

The medical records of 78,241 diabetes patients who took metformin were studied over a period of seven years by Craig Currie from the British Cardiff University. Currie expected to find that the diabetics would generally die before healthy people, but that was not the case. The people who had diabetes – which could cause cardiovascular disease, wear down nerves, harm kidneys, and make patients blind – lived no less than 18 % longer than the healthy ones.

The results have given Professor Nir Barzilai from New York new faith. Last year, he applied for the American authorities’ permission to let him test metformin on 1,500 healthy people aged 65-79 to see if they live longer and better than elderly people who do not get the drug. Nir Barzilai hopes that following the experiment, he will be able to develop a simple cure that can make us live 15-30 years longer.

He also thinks that metformin protects brain cells against Alzheimer’s and improves our capacity to think by up to 30%. So, he aims to prolong our lives and give us more years in good health by means of a drug that has already been approved for use.

TAKE A STEM CELL CURE AT 80

A race is going on, and considering all the ideas, it is only a question of time before the first youth pill will be available. In the future, you may keep age away by starting gene therapy with telomerase in your 40s, take pills with metformin and rapamycin, when you turn 60, and spoil yourself for your 80th birthday with a stem cell cure that repairs all bodily defects. However, it remains to be seen, whether the treatments can be combined to prolong our lives by up to 60 years. And what would you do with all that time?