The researchers were able to rejuvenate the skin cells of a 53-year-old woman to the equivalent of a 23-year-old woman.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge in England believe they can do the same with other tissues in the body.

The ultimate goal is to develop treatments for age-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and neurological disorders.

The technology is based on the techniques used to create Dolly, the cloned sheep more than 25 years ago.

Professor Wolf Reik, leader of the team from the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, told the BBC he hopes the technique could be used to keep people healthier for longer as they age.

“We’ve been dreaming of something like this. Many common diseases worsen with age, and the thought of helping people in this way is very exciting,” he said.

However, Professor Reich stressed that the study, published in the journal eLife, is at a very early stage.

He said there were several scientific problems he had to overcome before he could leave his lab and enter the clinic. But showing for the first time that cellular rejuvenation is possible is a critical step, he said.

Following in the footsteps of “Dolly”

The technique’s origins date back to the 1990s, when researchers at the Roslin Institute outside Edinburgh developed a method to transform an adult mammary gland cell from a sheep into an embryo.

The cloned sheep led to the creation of Dolly.

The goal of Roslin’s team was not to create sheep or human clones, but to use the technique to create what are called human embryonic stem cells.

They hoped these could be transformed into specific tissues, such as muscle, cartilage and nerve cells, to replace worn-out body parts.

The dolly technique was simplified in 2006 by then Professor Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University.

The new method, called IPS, involved adding chemicals to adult cells for about 50 days.

This resulted in genetic changes that turned adult cells into stem cells.

Stem cells created in both Dolly and IPS techniques must return to the cells and tissues that the patient needs.

This has proven difficult, and despite decades of efforts, the use of stem cells to treat disease is currently extremely limited.

a new method

Professor Reik’s team used the IPS technique on 53-year-old skin cells. But they reduced the chemical bath from 50 days to 12.

Dr. Dilgeet Gill was surprised to discover that the cells did not become embryonic stem cells, but rejuvenated to resemble those of a 23-year-old person.

“I remember the day I got the results and couldn’t believe that some cells were 30 years younger than they should have been. It was such an exciting day!” he assured.

Since the IPS method increases the risk of cancer, the technique cannot be transferred to the clinic immediately.

But Professor Reik is confident that now that it’s possible to rejuvenate cells, his team can come up with a safer alternative method.

“The long-term goal is to prolong human health rather than life expectancy so that people can age more healthily,” he said.

uses

Professor Reik says some of the early applications could be to develop drugs that would rejuvenate the skin of older people on cut or burned areas of the body as a way to speed healing.

The researchers showed that this is possible in principle, by showing that rejuvenated skin cells move faster in experiments simulating a wound.

The next step is to see if the technology will work in other tissues such as muscle, liver and blood cells.

Professor Melanie Welham, chief executive of the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, which partially funded the research that led to Dolly the Sheep, told the BBC the long-paused clinical benefits of the technology may not be that far off.

“If similar approaches or new therapies can revive immune cells that we know become less susceptible as we age, it may be possible in the future to boost people’s response to vaccines and their ability to fight infection.” .

In search of the “fountain of youth”

The question is whether research efforts in this area will lead to a whole-body regeneration method, a youth elixir, or an anti-aging pill.

Professor Reik said that the idea is not entirely far-fetched.

“The technique was applied to genetically modified mice and there are some signs of rejuvenation. One study showed signs of a rejuvenated pancreas, which is interesting for its potential to fight diabetes.”

But Professor Robin Lovell-Badge of the Crick Institute in London thinks the hurdles are remarkable.

He also doesn’t consider it a trivial process to transfer the rejuvenation process to other types of tissue, or indeed an anti-aging pill.

“If you find other chemicals that do the same thing, that’s fine, but they can be just as bad. So it’s ambitious to think you’ll find these chemicals easily and be safer.

“It’s also quite possible that other cell types require different conditions that can be difficult to control. And if you can safely do this with your whole body, there’s so much time left that I think it’s pure speculation.”