New research aims to turn back time and boost immunity

MELBOURNE researchers are working out how to slow, or even reverse, one of the most damaging effects of ageing.

Over time, our immune system weakens, leaving us less able to fight off viruses or infections and making us more prone to cancers and auto-immune diseases.

The aim of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research team – backed by almost $1m in new federal funding – is to develop a treatment to be given from age 60 to help people stay immunologically fitter in their twilight years.

Lead researcher Dr Christine Keenan said the way Covid had hit the elderly highlighted the impact of ageing on the blood and immune system.

“Immune system dysfunction is a lifelong process, but strong deterioration happens from mid-60s onwards, which tracks with how susceptible people have been to Covid,” Dr Keenan said.

“The usual mix of blood cells shifts as people age. It means that people don’t have what we call naive cells, so they don’t respond well to vaccines or new infections. That leaves them quite compromised.” Dr Keenan’s team previously uncovered two proteins that appear to be the main causes of the age-related immune dysfunction.

Now, in this National Health and Medical Research Council-funded project, they will use samples from elderly Victorian patients to help understand why this dysfunction occurs and test if they can reverse this process. “If we can improve their function that is lost with age, then we can restore immunity,” she said.

“At the end of the grant, we would want to have established whether these proteins are really good targets to reverse the ageing process in the immune system, and whether they could prevent the chance of people getting these blood cancers in old age.

“It would be about trying to restore people’s quality of life.

“I know for my parents, when they look after their grandkids and they get a little daycare cold, they’re knocked about for several weeks.

“Being able to restore that immunity so they could brush off that cold in a day or maybe not even catch it at all, I think that would be transformative,” Dr Keenan said.