Pill aims to turn back clock on ageing
INFERTILITY could be reversed, paralysed people could walk again and a 70-year-old body could be reprogrammed to be just 20 years old, thanks to a remarkable anti-ageing breakthrough by Australian scientists.
In a world first, a team of researchers led by University of NSW and Harvard Professor David Sinclair has developed a cell reprogramming process that could regenerate the human body.
He predicts the development could eventually cure paralysis and allow people to regrow damaged kidneys, livers and other organs and it will be trialled in humans in 2020.
In a separate development, the same team has also developed a vitamin B derivative tablet that appears to reduce baldness and reverse infertility.
It could enable 60-year-old women or those made infertile by chemotherapy to have children, Professor Sinclair says.
The pill increased the lifespan of mice by 10 per cent and also appears to reduce hair loss associated with age.
Professor Sinclair’s sister in law was in peri-menopause in her late 40s but after starting the tablet is fertile again.
The finding by the team’s University of NSW researcher Dr Lindsay Wu is yet to be published or peer reviewed and he says, “We do NOT recommend that people go out and take NAD precursors as they have not yet formally been tested for safety.”
Human trials are due to begin next year.
Sinclair who is taking his own age-boosting molecule says his biological age went from 57 (he’s 49) to 33 years as a result of the pill he hopes will be on the market within five years and cost as much as a coffee a day.
Professor Sinclair’s 79 year old father, who began the treatment 18 months ago, is white water rafting, caving, recently spent six days carrying a backpack up Cradle Mountain in Tasmania and “has the fitness of a 20-year-old.”
News Corp uncovered the breakthroughs as part of a wider investigation into the extraordinary measures Australians are taking to prolong their lives.
Professor Sinclair says his discoveries are “world changing”.