Reversing Aging Is a Reality…in Mice

Old age isn’t forever. In Boston labs, one researcher has found a way to give old, blind mice their eyesight back. David Sinclair, a professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research, maintains that aging is a reversible process, capable of being driven “forwards and backwards at will,” he told CNN.

His research, published in Cell, helped older mice develop smarter, younger brains and develop healthier muscle and kidney tissue.

According to Sinclair, aging is due to a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA. It forgets how to function.

“Much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software. I call it the information theory of aging,” he explained. “Underlying aging is information that is lost in cells, not just the accumulation of damage.”

Jae-Hyun Yang, a genetics research fellow in the Sinclair Lab coauthored the paper. He said the findings “will transform the way we view the process of aging and the way we approach the treatment of diseases associated with aging.”

Sinclair maintains there is a “backup copy of our youth” that can be triggered to regenerate.

“We’re showing why that software gets corrupted and how we can reboot the system by tapping into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young,” he told CNN.

“We’re not making stem cells, but turning back the clock so they can regain their identity,” explained Sinclair. “I’ve been really surprised by how universally it works. We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward.”

Sinclair said his team has reset the cells in mice multiple times, showing that aging can be reversed more than once. He is currently testing the genetic reset in primates. But it will take decades before any anti-aging clinical trials in humans begin, get analyzed and, if safe and successful, scaled to the mass needed for federal approval.

Until researchers unlock the fountain of youth in humans, Sinclair says people who want to live better, longer should follow a few rules:

• Consume a plant-based diet
• Eat less often
• Get sufficient rest
• Exercise vigorously three times a week to maintain muscle mass
• Don’t sweat the small stuff
• Have a good social group