Overview of Can Scientists Reverse Your Age?
In this NPR Shortwave episode, Regina Barber and producer Burlie McCoy explore whether researchers can make aging cells function more like young ones. Scientists are testing ways to reset cells’ age-related gene controls, with early work focused on conditions such as glaucoma and skin damage. The research is promising, but human studies are still in their early stages, and it is not yet clear whether these approaches can extend lifespan.
How Scientists Measure Aging
A leading theory is that aging partly reflects changes in epigenetics—the controls that switch genes on and off and help cells keep their identities. As those controls shift, cells may lose some ability to do their jobs.
Epigenetic clocks estimate biological age from these changes. But results can vary across tests, and different organs may age at different rates. Researchers are developing broader measures that combine data from multiple cell types and molecules, with the goal of better predicting disease risk.
Reprogramming Cells While Preserving Their Identity
The episode describes research based on Shinya Yamanaka’s Nobel Prize-winning discovery of four proteins that can reprogram cells toward a stem-cell-like state. Using all four can erase a cell’s identity; using three may make cells younger while preserving what they are—for example, keeping retinal cells as retinal cells.
Life Biosciences is testing this approach in people with glaucoma. The company had dosed three patients at the time of the episode; it reported that two showed some improvement and all three tolerated the treatment. These early trials are primarily assessing safety and tolerability, so the results do not yet establish that the treatment works.
Other Approaches Under Study
Researchers are also investigating treatments that remove senescent, or “zombie,” cells, which can accumulate damage and affect nearby cells. Rubedo Life Sciences says its drug has improved some skin conditions and damage from sun exposure in research so far. The team is also studying whether treating potentially cancerous skin lesions can prevent progression.
Attempts to reverse aging through blood plasma have shown less lasting effects: the reported reversal rebounded within a few months. In animals, researchers have reported encouraging results in tissues including muscle, kidneys, nerves, the immune system, and the brain, but those findings do not show that the same results will occur in people.
What Reversal Could Mean for Health and Lifespan
The researchers interviewed see aging as a contributor to many diseases, which raises the possibility that treating age-related changes could help prevent or address multiple conditions. Their views on longer human lifespans differ: some emphasize that the evidence is too limited to know whether people will live longer, while David Sinclair predicts that future treatments could extend lifespan by decades.
For now, the clearest goal is healthier aging and treatment of specific age-related diseases. Rejuvenating the whole human body remains a long-term possibility, not a demonstrated outcome.