In the opening sequences of the LA Theater Works’ adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” one of the actors screeches out: “Blood is the life!”
It is a macabre yet prophetic statement.
The latest research into anti-aging therapies is demonstrating that blood — young blood in particular — may hold the key to reversing the aging process.
The idea that young blood can have a rejuvenating effect on the elderly first came to light in the 1950s in experiments at Cornell University. When two rats were stitched together at the flanks, connecting their circulatory systems, the process (known as parabiosis) had startling results. On autopsy, the cartilage of the old rats appeared much younger.
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The experiments were largely ignored, in part because no one could explain the results. Then scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine resumed the research in the early 2000s, and in 2005 reported that old mice connected to young mice saw their muscle tissue heal like young mice, while healing in the young mice was slowed down to the pace of an old mouse. Now they knew what was happening. Something in the blood of the young mice was turning on the stem cells in the muscles of the old mice.
Research suggests blood — young blood in particular — may hold the key to reversing the aging process.
Three years later, those findings were confirmed by a doctoral student, Saul Villeda, at Stanford, who wanted to see if young mouse blood would affect the brains of old mice. After surgically connecting older mice with young ones, he looked at their brains.
Sure enough, the old mice receiving the young blood experienced a burst of brain-cell growth in their hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for creating long-term memory. This, and similar research, has led to all sorts of gruesome projections that rich old people would buy the blood of the young in an effort to reverse aging.
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But hang on a minute, said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an expert in longevity research.
“Don’t plan on hooking yourself up to your grandchildren to get younger any time soon, or giving yourself an injection of young blood,” said Olshansky, the co-author of “The Quest for Immortality.” “It’s too early to see. We don’t know how big a deal any of this is until it’s tested for safety and efficacy.”
Scientists are also closer than ever to discovering the mechanism involved in the youth-effect of young blood.
Last year, one of the students at Stanford during the early 2000s experiments, now a stem-cell biologist at Harvard University, isolated a protein called GDF11 from the blood of the young mice. Researcher Amy Wagers, along with cardiologist Richard Lee, injected this protein into old mice and found that it reversed age-related thickening of the heart. They also reported in the journal Science that it rejuvenated muscle and brain tissue in mice.
While these studies have been challenged, there is little doubt that something in young blood is reversing aging in older mice.
Bringing this to the human realm, researchers are testing Alzheimer’s patients to see if young human blood can reverse their neurological deterioration.
Tony Wyss-Coray, a professor of neurology at Stanford who is directing this effort, has published research showing the plasma from young mice can reverse the cognitive decline of older mice, remarkably improving their memories. He tried the same experiment, this time using human plasma on the old mice. It worked.
Now he is running a small clinical study where patients with mild Alzheimer’s are receiving weekly transfusions of plasma from 20-year-olds. Results are expected by the end of the year.
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“What we hope is that there are some signs of improvement by this treatment,” Wyss-Coray told an audience at a recent TED talk. “Maybe the fountain of youth is within us but has just dried out (and) we can produce these factors synthetically.”
In the meantime, Olshansky said, don’t expect to get your hands on the age-reversing formula, at least not right away. In his new book, due out in December, “Aging: The Longevity Dividend,” he discusses the social implications of age-reversal research.
“This could be potentially huge, if it works,” he told LifeZette.
However, he said, “There isn’t anything of value in our world today, be it fresh water, money, or food, that is equitably distributed. Don’t expect anything that extends life to be equitably distributed.”
Maybe the idea of rich old men buying the blood of the young isn’t so far off, after all.
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