Scientists in Israel has successfully experimented on 250 mice, boosting their life expectancy by nearly 23 percent, something they believe can be replicated on humans too.
Israeli scientists have found a way to increase the life expectancy of mice by 23 percent, in groundbreaking research that they hope to replicate in humans — who could then reach an average age of 120 years old.
The researchers boosted the life expectancy of 250 rodents by increasing the supply of SIRT6, a protein that normally wanes in the aging process, the Times of Israel reported.
In the peer-reviewed research published in the journal
Nature Communications, the scientists also said the protein-enriched animals
were less prone to cancer.
“The change in life expectancy is significant when you
consider that an equivalent jump in human life expectancy would have us living
on average until almost 120,” Prof. Haim Cohen of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat
Gan told the news outlet.
“The changes we saw in mice may be translatable to humans,
and if so that would be exciting,” added Cohen, whose lab is working on
identifying drugs that may allow the SIRT6 to safely be spiked in people.
In 2012, he became the first researcher to increase the
protein levels in animals and boost life expectancy — leading male mice to live
15 percent longer, but that experiment had no impact on female mice, according
to the Times of Israel.
The latest study, which included Prof. Rafael de Cabo of the
US National Institutes of Health, showed the increased life expectancy among
mice of both genders.
But it is bigger among the males, which now live 30 percent
longer than males from a control group. The females are living 15 percent
longer than their control group counterparts, according to the report.
The scientists saw that aging mice lose the ability to
generate energy due to the difficulty of deriving energy from fats and lactic
acid.
But older mice with high levels of SIRT6 could easily
generate energy from these sources — and had less cholesterol, a lower
incidence of cancer, and could also run faster.
“This discovery shows that SIRT6 controls the rate of
healthy aging, and this shows that boosting its activity could potentially slow
aging,” Cohen said.
Although he could easily increase SIRT6 levels in mice by
genetically modifying them, boosting the protein in humans would require drugs.
Cohen said his lab may be able to replicate the results in
humans in two to three years.
“We are developing small molecules that may increase the
levels SIRT6, or make existing amounts of the protein more active,” he said.
“They may be used in the future to address aging.”
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