London - Researchers have found a drug they say can rejuvenate ageing brain and muscle tissue and could lead to a treatment for old age.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, hope the drug could make ageing tissues throughout the body act young again.
They found that it simultaneously perks up old stem cells in the brains and muscles of mice, a finding that could lead to drug interventions for humans. “We established that you can use a single small molecule to rescue essential function in not only aged brain tissue, but aged muscle,” said researcher David Schaffer.
“That is good news, because if every tissue had a different molecular mechanism for ageing, we wouldn’t be able to have a single intervention that rescues the function of multiple tissues.”
The drug interferes with the activity of a protein that has been shown to depress the ability of various types of stem cells to renew tissue.
The protein is said to age stem cells in organs such as the brain, pancreas, heart and muscle and is described as “one of the main culprits in ageing”. The work, reported in the journal Oncotarget, shows the drug rejuvenates “multiple organ systems”.
Daily Mail