Young blood for old people

In August 2008, graduate student Saul Villeda informed colleagues about the new results of his radical project, says journalist Ian Sample. Villeda was part of a group of young American scientists who studied aging and degeneration of the nervous system.

Villeda "found out whether elderly and fragile individuals can rejuvenate thanks to an infusion of blood taken from the young. The hypothesis is not as absurd as it may seem," the article says.

Villeda conducted a pilot study on pairs of mice whose circulatory systems were connected. The young mice received blood from the old ones, and the old ones received blood from the young ones. Villeda studied how it affects their brains. "The neurons of the aging brain lose their connections and begin to die," the author explains. The hippocampus is one of the first to suffer from old age, as a result, memory weakens, thinking malfunctions.

The author recounts Villeda's conclusions: "In old mice receiving young blood, explosive growth of brain cells in the hippocampus began. They had 3-4 times more newborn neurons than their peers. The old blood had the opposite effect on the brains of young mice, slowing down the birth of new neurons and making them look prematurely old."

Over the past 7 years, research in this direction has made great progress. "Some suggest that there is an "antidote" to the destructive effects of old age in young blood. But the supposed rejuvenating properties of young blood should be perceived with healthy skepticism," the author writes, explaining that the beneficial effect is confirmed only by experiments with mice. "No beneficial effects in humans have ever been proven. However, no one has ever looked for them," the article says.

However, in October 2014, Tony Wyss-Coray, a Swiss-born professor of neurology at Stanford University, who was Villeda's supervisor in 2008, began the first tests of "young blood" in humans. "At Stanford Medical School, blood plasma taken from young people is transfused to old people with Alzheimer's disease. The results are expected at the end of this year," the newspaper reports.

The author points to the problem of our time: people have begun to live longer, but their health status has not necessarily improved compared to their ancestors. Old people struggle with chronic diseases and syndromes, sometimes with several at once.

Medicine prefers to treat each disease separately. After all, the reasons are different. "But some researchers take a different position: they believe that in old age, the main driving force of diseases is senility itself. So why not work on anti-aging medications?" – the article says.

According to the author, scientists are unlikely to be able to completely stop aging, but perhaps they will learn to prevent the changes that are behind the most severe chronic diseases.

The newspaper describes Viss-Korai's scientific path: he was looking for ways to better understand how Alzheimer's disease occurs in humans. It is pointless to study the brains of the deceased: subtle neurological changes begin 20-30 years before patients are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Wyss-Coray suggested that the molecular composition of blood reflects the state of the brain. He tried to develop a method for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease by blood, several years before it manifested. Alas, the test turned out to be unreliable. But in the process of work, Viss-Koray noticed that in healthy people, the content of some proteins in the blood decreases with age, while others increase.

Neurologist Thomas Rando, deputy director of the Stanford Center for Longevity, led a series of experiments in 2005, which later became closely intertwined with the work of Viss-Korai. "In order for the body to remain healthy and in good working shape, it needs stem cells, but in old people, stem cells cease to perform their function: that's why, for example, their wounds heal much more slowly," the newspaper writes. Rando wondered: maybe "young blood" will turn on stem cells in old people?

He experimented on mice spliced together (this method is called parabiosis). The author recounts the results: "In old mice, young blood "activated" stem cells that quickly regenerated injured muscles." In young mice, old blood, on the contrary, slowed down the work of stem cells, and tissues healed more slowly. Rando also noticed that new brain cells began to appear in old mice.

Viss-Korai and Rando began to collaborate. "It is known that proteins, the increase and decrease in the level of which in the blood was observed by Viss-Korai, affect biological processes. Did they trigger the changes that Rando had observed in the example of muscles? What if they are similarly able to rejuvenate the brain?"– explains the author.

Wyss-Coray entrusted this work to his graduate student Saul Villeda, mentioned above. Villeda discovered by studying spliced mice: old mice, like old people, have high levels of CCL11 protein in their blood. If you inject this protein into young mice, their memory and learning ability weaken.

Viss-Korai suggested infusing plasma from young mice into old mice. It turned out that such mice cope with memory tasks no worse than individuals who are half as young.

Villeda began to understand how "young blood" affects the manifestation of genes in old mice. He found that infusions of "young plasma" stimulate the activity of genes that help strengthen and weaken connections between neurons – that is, a process extremely important for learning and memorization.

Meanwhile, other scientists have found that the hormone oxytocin rejuvenates muscle tissue in old individuals, and old mice regain endurance under the influence of young plasma.

"All studies point in the same direction," the author writes. There are proteins in the blood that preserve the youth of tissues, and other proteins that "age" tissues. "According to the hypothesis of Viss-Korai, at the moment of birth, our blood abounds in proteins that promote the growth and healing of our tissues. In adulthood, the level of these proteins decreases sharply," the author writes. The tissues begin to degenerate. The body in response secretes proteins that contribute to inflammation. Chronic inflammation destroys cells and accelerates aging.

Viss-Korai emphasizes: this means that the age of an organism or some organ can be changed in one direction or the other.

"In terms of business, the transfusion of "young blood" provokes all sorts of fears," the author writes. What if there is a "black market" where teenagers will be drained of blood for the highest bidder, and children will be abducted from the streets? There is a danger that traders will offer fake or unsafe plasma. Healthcare is one of the most profitable sectors for criminals and scammers, the author emphasizes.

However, it may turn out that simple infusions of "young plasma" will not have an effect on the elderly. "Viss-Korai admits that he has such a suspicion. He believes that a more powerful potion than natural plasma may be needed to rejuvenate the elderly. He estimates that it could be a concentrated mixture of 10-20 rejuvenating factors from the "young blood", supplemented with antibodies that would neutralize the effect of aging factors in the "old blood", the newspaper writes. Wiss-Korai has already created the company Alkahest, which intends to separate plasma and prepare a "rejuvenating cocktail" from its elements.

The co-founder of the company, Karoli Nikolic, told reporters that the idea came when he heard the story of Chinese billionaire Chen Dinh-hwa. He died of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 89. His grandson told Nikolic that at the end of his life, Chen barely recognized his relatives. But when he received a plasma transfusion due to another illness, Chen's mind suddenly cleared up. Later, Chen Dinh-hwa's relatives invested money in Alkahest.

According to the publication, it may take 10-15 years to identify key proteins in plasma responsible for rejuvenation or aging, as well as to develop a drug using them.

Alkahest is currently conducting the aforementioned experiments on humans. The scale is small: it is allowed to attract only 18 people aged 50-90 years with mild or moderate Alzheimer's disease. Each participant receives infusions of "young plasma" of a person or saline solution for four weeks, once a week. Then a break for 6 weeks and another 4-week course. The process is anonymous: neither the patients, nor their nurses, nor the head of the experiment know what is being poured into the patients – plasma or saline. Doctors only observe whether patients have cognitive improvements. The results will be analyzed in October.

The author points out the problems: Rando fears that infusions of anti-aging proteins for many years can cause cancer. Viss-Korai is more optimistic.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru

04.08.2015