TOKYO, Japan – Scientists said Wednesday they have restored rat vision by treating “milestones” that can restore cells to a more youthful state and one day help treat glaucoma and age-related diseases.
The procedure provides the possibility of effectively reversing time at the cellular level, helping cells regain their ability to heal from damage caused by injury, disease and age.
“I am excited about the rejuvenation of organs and tissues that have failed due to aging and disease, especially where there is no effective treatment for dementia,” David Sinclair, senior author of the study, told AFP.
Receive the Times of Israel’s daily edition via email and never miss our best stories free sign up
“We hope to treat glaucoma in human patients (in the trial phase) in two years,” added Sinclair, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School with Jewish heritage.
David Sinclair, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School (video screenshot)
Healing is based on the properties that cells have when the body develops as a fetus. At that point, the cells can repair and regenerate themselves, but that ability decreases rapidly with age.
Scientists have argued that if the cells were to return to their youthful state, they would be able to repair the damage.
To turn the clock back, they modified the process used to make “blank slate” cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells.
Those cells are created by a cocktail injection of four proteins that help the cell re-program.
The team did not want to retrieve the cora cells in that blank slate state, but to restore them to a more youthful state.
So they tweaked the cocktail, using only three “youth-restored” proteins – dubbed OSK – they could just turn the clock to the right point.
They target retinal ganglion cells in the eye, which are connected to the brain by a connection called acons.
Illustrated: A technician holds a laboratory mouse at Jackson Laboratory in Harbor, Maine, Bar Harbor, January 24, 2006. (AP Photo / Robert F. Bukti)
This axon forms the optic nerve – and damage caused by injury, aging, or disease leads to poor vision and blindness.
To test the effects of cocktails, they first injected OST into rat eyes with optic nerve injuries.
They observed a doubling of the number of live retinal ganglion cells and a fivefold increase in nerve progression.
“This treatment allowed the nerves to return to the brain. Usually they just die, ”Sinclair said.
With indications that OSK can counteract the damage caused by the injury, the team resisted the effects of the disease – especially glaucoma, which is a leading cause of blindness in humans.
They mimicked the disease state, where the build-up of eye pressure causes damage to the optic nerve in several dozen rats.
According to a study published in the journal Nature, OSK treatment recipients saw “significant” benefits.
Tests showed that “half of the visual acuity lost due to increased intraocular pressure was restored.”
Promising results are similarly given in older rats with poor vision due to age.
After injecting the cocktail, the rats’ vision improved and their optic nerve cells showed electrical signals and other features similar to those of small rats.
An Illustrated Image of Neurons (iStock by Whitehon; Getty Images)
The study was performed over a period of one year, and the rats showed no side effects.
Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University School of Medicine and Medicine, who was not involved in the research, said the findings were “bound to provoke great excitement.”
With a potentially long way to go before humans can be treated, the results in animal tests will need to be confirmed, but Huberman said they did present a “landmark in the field” nonetheless.
“The effects of OSK in humans remain to be tested but current results suggest that OSK species are more likely to reprogram brain neurons,” he wrote in a review commissioned by Nature.
“For decades, it has been argued that understanding common neural developmental processes can one day lead to tools to repair an aged or damaged brain. [this] The task is clear: that era has now come. “
