A WRINKLE IN TIME

Five years ago Bruce Ames called his son, a computer executive in New York, with some exciting news. "I told him, 'We're changing old rats to new rats!' " recalls Ames, a senior scientist at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California. His son was not impressed. "Let me know when you change old people to young rats," he said. Such human-to-animal transformations are still confined to the minds of sarcastic sons and science-fiction writers, but researchers are getting closer to replicating Ames's rat results in humans.

In studies published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, Ames and his colleagues fed older rats two chemicals normally found in the body's cells (and also sold as nutritional supplements): acetyl-L-carnitine and alphalipoic acid. Not only did the rats perform better on problem-solving and memory tests, but they moved around with more ease and energy.

Researchers determined that the combination of chemicals had improved the function of mitochondria, organelles that serve as a cell's main energy source. Ames formed a company called Juvenon to license the combination of cell-rejuvenating supplements (also sold separately at several health stores). The company plans to begin human trials soon to evaluate the cognitive effects of the dual supplements. In the meantime, Ames, who chairs Juvenon's scientific advisory board but gets no proceeds from the company, is overseeing lab research on human cells in tissue culture. In one study, Berkeley researchers found that lipoic acid protected the cell from oxidation when iron or hydrogen peroxide was added.

Now he hopes to replicate those results in human subjects. Other studies have already linked unhealthy mitochondria to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type 2 diabetes and other degenerative diseases, so reversing or repairing decay in mitochondria could help to stave off the age-related diseases. "I'm hoping we can add a few years to people's lives," says Ames, who's 76. "I think we can."

© 2005