Researchers believe they have created a drug which can stop humans from ageing and reverse the effects of ‘cell death’, with trials set to begin later this year.
Cell death is the natural, and necessary, process that comes in multiple forms. One form is known as necrosis, a type of cell death that’s unregulated, eventually causing premature cellular destruction.
During necrosis, afflicted cells will swell until they rupture and expel their insides into the surroundings, which can result in chronic inflammation, genetic instability, and, in some cases, tumours.
The process has been linked to many diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, various cancers, and kidney disease.
World-leading cancer journal, Oncogene noted in May that a study into the latter condition could allow researchers to better understand how necrosis works and how to combat it.
Dr Carina Kern, a former University College London geneticist and current CEO of the biotech company LinkGevity, led the study and believes a new class of drugs, ‘anti-nectrotics’, could become the first medication to be used to reverse the effects of ageing.
Dr Kern’s involvement with the project stemmed partly from her experience as a child watching her grandmother’s health quickly deteriorate from an age-related illness.
“At the time, I could not comprehend how I was so easily cured of nearly any injury, and I would be back to normal. But with her, the doctors just said ‘you can’t intervene—it’s just ageing,’” She explained.
Decades after witnessing this decline, Dr Kern developed the “Blueprint Theory” of ageing, which analyses the origins of ageing and where to intervene to avoid ailment.
One of the main documented factors in the study is necrosis which Kern confirms the “crux” of which to be a “loss of calcium-ion gradients.”
She adds: “Levels of calcium inside the cell are typically 10,000 to 100,000 times lower than outside. Calcium is a key signalling molecule, meaning it controls lots of different processes within your cell.
“And so upon stress, you lose this regulation and then you’re initiating multiple pathways in a heightened and really destructive manner within the cell.”
Despite knowing of necrosis for more than a century, and gaining a better understanding after reviewing it under microscopes in the 1970s, not a lot of progress has been made to prevent its role in debilitating diseases.
But Dr Kern and a group of renal specialists may be close to a breakthrough that will focus on kidney disease and, if successful, anti-ageing.
Dr Kern said: “It was thought it was just too complex a process to intervene in. What we’ve managed to identify for the first time is that you can block necrosis, but you have to block more than one molecular target… When we did that, we saw up to 90 per cent of suppression of necrosis.”
Co-author of the study, Dr Keith Siew, added: “The kidney…is by far the most in-demand organ, and the one you’re most likely to die on a waiting list for.
“Some people think dialysis just fixes the problem, but the mortality rate of dialysis is that every year you’re on dialysis, you lose 10 per cent of survival.”
Dr Siew has previously worked with NASA to better understand how spaceflight affects kidneys, especially when astronauts travel beyond Earth’s magnetosphere, becoming susceptible to cosmic radiation.
“Only 24 people have left the protection of Earth’s magnetic field. You might feel fine on the way, but will you need dialysis on the way back?
“Anti-necrotics could be a way to make those tissues and organs resilient enough to withstand that damage and pause cell death.”
Both Kern and Siew claim to remain “professional sceptics” about how effective this drug can be as clinical trials of the anti-necrotic medication will begin later in 2025.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” Siew states. “Until that data is rock solid…a lot of people will view this skeptically and rightfully so.”