Eternal youth remains a recurring theme in the popular imagination, and as such has attracted the attention of countless researchers. Some work in the lab at Harvard Medical School where geneticist David Sinclair works (and is named after him). His work has focused specifically on the relationship between genetics and aging, and it is worth briefly reviewing the status of his research.

Change how we perceive aging.
In a recent talk on the American chain CNN, Sinclair explained the philosophy they hold on to what they’re fighting in the lab: aging. For him and his team, aging is a disease with its own symptoms, and strange as it may sound, he is not alone in this belief. Conventionally accepted diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s, some of which are closely linked to age, are symptoms for this group of specialists.

Origin, Yamanaka factors.
Laboratory research is largely based on the genetic level, and the latest line of research is no exception. Cells have all the genetic information of our body. It is therefore possible to “rejuvenate” them to the starting point and turn an advanced cell into a stem cell. Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2012 after succeeding in turning adult mouse cells into stem cells six years ago.

What does working in the Sinclair lab consist of?
However, since stem cells are zero kilometers long, they have no memory and can transform into any cell that makes up our body, depending on the genes given to them. . What’s more, the first animal tests in 2016 at a California lab trying to solve this problem caused mice to develop cancerous tumors, although not all experiments were bad at the time.

Between the “aging” cell and the tabula rasa of the parent cell, Sinclair and his team see the presence of a “spare” cell that is already grown but still young. They call this understanding the “information theory of aging”. This theory leads them to view aging as a partial loss of information. The cell cannot read the information (as if the CD in which it is stored has been scratched), which causes the cell to forget what its job is.

How to move from theory to practice.
The team believe they have discovered the button to reset the cell and restore the cell’s ability to read its genetic information as before. This is not the elixir of eternal youth, the cell recovered from this return to the initial configuration will age normally again, but it is an important step. The team was able to save the damaged cells in the mice’s optic nerves by simply reactivating three of their genes.

Yes but…
In speaking to CNN, Sinclair is optimistic about transferring these developments from animal models to humans. “We did it in a mouse. I have no reason to think why it shouldn’t work on a human.” The truth is that while the switch from mice to humans is a deciding factor that many treatments remain, and not knowing what might fail doesn’t mean nothing will fail.

“If we were mice, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes and most inherited disorders would be a thing of the past,” says Sam Zimmerman, a Harvard University researcher. We share more than 90% of our genes with these mammals, and yet they do not work the same, depending on the type of cell they developed from.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the road is closed, either, but it’s a cause for skepticism. It is not possible to set a date, although 53-year-old Sinclair thinks he may have personally witnessed the moment of practical results.

Biological and chronological age.
One of the secondary goals of the Sinclair lab is to democratize knowledge about our biological age. Biological age is distinguished from chronological age, which we calculate from our birth, because it tells us our true aging.

Biological age can be measured, but there is some variation in how to do it, but tracking it is not within everyone’s reach. A number of biomarkers are used to calculate this, and analysis may be required to pay for medical tests. For Sinclair, a necessary step to prevent aging is to be able to control our state of health.

It works for me.
The work of Sinclair and his laboratory is extensive and not without controversy. The researcher has a certain habit of trying his advice on himself. He boasts that his biological age is closer to 40 than his chronological age, and he claims it’s thanks to some simple “tricks”. Some of these have been confirmed by the scientific community, such as exercising regularly, reducing our meat consumption, reducing stress and sleeping well.

Others would be more controversial. An example of this would be the consumption of nicotinamide mononucleotide supplements. Consumption of this substance is based on Sinclair’s work in which he presented his work with mice almost a decade ago, but the most recently published studies still refer to animal models.

Battle genetics. The work of the Sinclair lab can be seen as a challenge to genetics. He gives as an example a genetic predisposition to diseases such as diabetes or cardiovascular diseases. It is quite possible that they do not manifest themselves due to certain environmental conditions and our lifestyle. Likewise, a healthy lifestyle and good environmental conditions can help combat our genetic susceptibility to aging. Science is not certain yet and, ironically, only time will tell.

Image | Paul Theodor Oja