Glaucoma treatment hope after scientists reverse ageing in mice cells, ‘milestone’ finding with applications for dementia and other age-related diseases

Human embryo cells can repair and regenerate themselves, but lose that ability as we age; treatment turns back the clock in cells, allowing them to fix damage

The procedure could be tried on glaucoma patients within two years, and a neuroscientist says a decades-long search for tools to repair the aged brain is over

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Scientists have restored sight in mice using a treatment that returns cells to a more youthful state and could one day help treat glaucoma and other age-related diseases. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:20pm, 3 Dec 2020Updated: 10:24am, 4 Dec 2020

Scientists have restored sight in mice using a “milestone” treatment that returns cells to a more youthful state and could one day help treat glaucoma and other age-related diseases.

The process offers the tantalising possibility of effectively turning back time at the cellular level, helping cells recover the ability to heal damage caused by injury, disease and age.

“I’m excited about being able to rejuvenate organs and tissues that fail due to ageing and disease, especially where there are no effective treatments, such as dementia,” said the senior author of the study, David Sinclair. “We hope to treat glaucoma in human patients (at the trial stage) in two years,” added Sinclair, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

The treatment is based on the properties that cells have when the body is developing as an embryo. At that time, cells can repair and regenerate themselves, but that capacity declines rapidly with age. The scientists reasoned that if cells could be induced to return to that youthful state, they would be able to repair damage.

David Sinclair, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, was senior author in the study.

To turn back the clock, they modified a process usually used to create the “blank slate” cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells. Those cells are created by injecting a cocktail of four proteins that help reprogram it.