Are We Close to Reversing the Aging Process?
One of man’s greatest fears is aging. We’ve seen what the effect of aging has done to most people. They either want to go back in time or dwell in wishful thinking. Aging has several conditions, like cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and brittle bones.
Scientists at the Salk Institute, in conjunction with Greentech, have shown that they can safely and productively reverse the aging process in middle-aged mice by changing and resetting cells in the system of these mice.
Scientists believe that they may have skipped the aging process by three decades. They have successfully rewound the aging process without any tweaks or cell malfunction. They have also restored the functions of the parents and biological cells while modifying newer and younger cells.
This finding can change the world of biology. This test is still in its early stage, and it could be a fit for regenerative medicine. More trials are ongoing to replicate this method in other body cells.
“We are elated that we can use this approach across the life span to slow down aging in normal animals. The technique is both safe and effective in mice. In addition to tackling age-related diseases, this approach may provide the biomedical community with a new tool to restore tissue and organism health by improving cell function and resilience in different disease situations, such as neurodegenerative diseases.” Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, Professor of Gene Expression Laboratory and holder of the Roger Guillemin Chair.
During the process, scientists are aware of adding a combination of four reprogramming molecules, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and cMyc, also known as the Yamanaka factor. These cells automatically reset epigenetic marks to their original patterns. This is the congruent technique to which scientists can't reverse aging.
A study on aging published in 2016 by researchers at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, predicted that signs of aging could be reversed by exposing cells to the Yamanaka mentioned above factors.
The altered mice in the research developed tumorous cancer before passing away. Some scientists have determined that some exposure was not healthy for the mice, which led to its early death halfway through the experiment.
Molecular Biologist in Harvard, David Sinclair, and his team in 2020 not only reversed the aging process in mice but also reversed anomalies and defects in these mice. Mice who had poor eyesight could see better after the experiment.
“It's a permanent reset, as far as we can tell, and we think it may be a universal process that could be applied across the body to reset our age," said Sinclair, who has spent the last 20 years studying ways to reverse the ravages of time. happen. We have the technology today to go into your hundreds without worrying about getting cancer in your 70s, heart disease in your 80s, and Alzheimer's in your 90s.” Sinclair states.
After frequent rounds of testing and exposure, the genetic forum believes that such exposure could be detrimental to the health of the rats. They suspect such exposure may cause carcinogenic tumors in the mice used for the experiment. So how safe would it be for humans?
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