Aging may be inevitable, but some of its diseases and frailty may be preventable. Animal studies suggest reversing cell age clock may be possible.
Reversing one’s biological clock has become an increasingly popular topic of conversation thanks to longevity enthusiasts and biohacking podcasters, but can it really be done? For any change to be effective it would take years of longitudinal studies showing whether it causes reduced morbidity or extended mortality rates.
What’s the difference?
Researchers have long studied ways to extend life and treat age-related diseases as they arise; but it may be possible for these ailments to be reversed by targeting their causes directly. Harvard Medical School researchers recently conducted a groundbreaking study showing it’s possible to slow cellular aging through reverse genetic engineering techniques.
Scientists were successful in completely reversing cell aging in an animal for the first time ever – in this instance a mouse. Their work, published in Cell, represented the culmination of 13-year project to understand how our bodies naturally age so as to stop or reverse its process.
The new technique involves altering DNA of cells to rejuvenate them. To do this, the team grew cells with genetic makeup similar to mature mice and introduced Yamanaka factors – factors which cause adult stem cells to revert into adult ones without losing identity – into them. After several tests, these regenerated stem cells displayed biological age signs such as compromised nuclear-cytoplasmic compartments leading to protein leakage into cytosol and signs of biological age such as nuclear-cytoplasmic membrane deterioration leading to protein leakage into cytosol from within their mother cells.
Reversing cell senescence with chemicals did not result in tumorigenesis or uncontrollable cell division, as has been seen with other rejuvenation studies utilizing gene therapy and chemical compounds that erase chromatin structures and reset gene expression patterns of young cells. The findings indicate a barrier must be overcome in order to rejuvenate cells in vivo; the authors of this study are exploring various potential chemical solutions as a means of breaking through this barrier.
Six compounds–including rapamycin, metformin and an AMPK activator drug–were effective at effectively reversing senescence in an aged mouse cell model. Furthermore, these agents reverted its transcriptional signature which contained numerous genes associated with senescence induction. These findings provide a significant step toward the goal of attaining negligible cellular senescence for human cells so as to delay aging and avoid disease.
What can I do to help?
While aging cannot be completely stopped, there are things we can do to slow it down. These include practicing healthy habits such as eating a well-balanced diet, drinking plenty of water, cutting back on smoking and alcohol intake, exercising regularly, using sunscreen when exposed to UV light, and supplementing our diets with antioxidants – which all can ensure biological ages don’t outstrip chronological ones and lower risks related to premature aging and many diseases.
Utilizing emerging research into anti-aging therapies may also prove effective. Stem cell therapy could potentially reverse the effects of aging and restore natural skin function while giving us more youthful looks; using your body’s cells to produce collagen for skin firmness.
An exciting breakthrough has been the development of DNA tests to measure our biological ages instead of only our chronological ones. Scientists have discovered that an individual’s genetic makeup may sometimes indicate they are younger than their chronological age – this phenomenon is known as biological ageing, and may be affected by stress levels and environmental influences like smoking.
As noted above, it’s too early to determine whether this type of testing and therapy will actually extend human lifespans, but the prospect that it could lead to longer, healthier lives has people excited. Furthermore, other researchers are exploring genetic manipulation techniques as a potential means of reversing animal aging, an amazing step that could dramatically extend human life expectancies.
