It might not be Ponce De Leon’s fabled Fountain of Youth, but scientists say they may be getting close to a way to reverse the aging process. By transplanting certain cells and using a drug-and-plant cocktail, within weeks mice the equivalent age of an 80-year-old human were tearing up treadmills and living longer and healthier than other mice.
The Mayo Clinic scientists targeted senescent [sen-ESCENT] cells, older cells that become dysfunctional as they age but don’t die off. Making matters worse, they send out inflammatory compounds that kill young cells and disable cells that create new cells.
The team transplanted older cells into young and middle-aged mice and within two weeks, the mice were slower and frailer. The new cells only survived for about 40 days, yet the damage they did lasted for months.
The scientists then gave the mice a leukemia drug called dasatinib [dah-SAT-in-ib] and quercetin [QUER-ce-tin], a plant pigment found in many fruits and vegetables. In results published in Nature Medicine, the compound killed enough of the transplanted cells to keep the young mice from prematurely aging. The older mice walked faster, ran longer on a treadmill and gripped objects more strongly. Really old mice lived 36 percent longer than those not given the compounds and enjoyed better health and strength.
Before you go out and gobble up the items used in the study, the researchers stressed there is much more work to be done. Clinical trials are just getting started that are using these and other compounds to target specific diseases associated with the aging process. This, the experts note, will ultimately target aging itself.