Replacing young blood and reversing aging by 54%? U.S. scientists discover the key factors behind the discovery

To replace the blood of young people, the age is nearly doubled?

A year ago, Steve Horvath of the University of California found that after 8 times of blood sharing between old mice and young mice, the average age of the vital organs of old mice regressed by 54%, which is equivalent to returning from 50 to 25 years old.

Once this achievement was announced, it caused a great uproar in the international aging biology community, and many countries in China and the United States carried out related research.

Although the scientific mechanism behind this has not been fully disclosed, it is like opening a Pandora's Box: young blood has become the "target of hunting" by capital almost instantly. Some wealthy people who are closely watching the latest technological developments are willing to spend a lot of money to participate in it. They believe that the "key" of youth is hidden in their blood, and hope to use it to grab more healthy time for themselves.

A Hong Kong billionaire invested US$37.5 million in Alkahest, a blood exchange agency, and commercialized the research; Peter Thiel, the founder of the US payment giant, had the idea of ​​"young people". According to US media reports, he every quarter They will "replace" part of their blood with young people aged 18-21, and the purpose is also very clear, "to live to 150 years old".

In the name of research, Ambrosia, an exchange blood organization, conducts paid clinical trials to replace fresh blood from young people aged 16-25 within 48 hours. A liter is priced at $8,000. After a month, the middle-aged and elderly subjects who received the injection of young blood showed improvements in cognition, endurance and hair and skin. Russian biohacker Nikolay Sidorov publicly stated on social networks that after three replacements, he "drank three cups of coffee, with a clear head and light steps".

Countless netizens scolded the rich for "doing whatever they want with money" and regarded Peter Thiel as a "vampire". The local area in California urgently stopped related commercial services on the grounds of unknown risks, but it was too late. Blood has become the "fountain of youth", which has become widely known from the secrets of the rich.

In addition to anger, the public is also curious about the secret behind the blood. Some media reporters directly questioned , "Can we use the "scientific mechanism" behind it to unlock the secrets of aging and benefit every ordinary person?"

The answer to the mystery was revealed by a recent scientific research update from the University of Berkeley.

Professor Conboy and his wife, together with researchers from the Buck Institute of Aging, confirmed that the key to exchange transfusion is not the mysterious substance hidden in the young blood, but that the "senescence protein" in the blood of the old individual is doubled, thereby increasing the "NAD+" in the body. "s level. Relevant scientific research results were published in "Nature".

For a time, the mystery of the "exchange experiment" was greatly weakened . Because this kind of aging mechanism has long been recognized as an intervention method in the biological community. According to biological theory, NAD+ is related to 95% of the energy exchange in the human body, and is closely related to the health of cells and DNA, and the latter two will be damaged and declined over time and young growth. Increasing the level of NAD+ can remove aging proteins and repair DNA damage, thereby delaying aging.

From 2013 to 2021, Harvard, Tokyo University in Japan, Noda Pharmaceutical and Guangzhou Sports University in China have successively carried out relevant clinical experiments, using raw materials provided by Geneharbor in Hong Kong, to explore the implementation and promotion of NAD+ technology.

The first adopters of the new technology are still the super-rich. Professor D. Sinclaire of Harvard Genetics and Biology revealed that as early as the experimental stage, many rich people called to inquire about the research progress. A few years later, the relevant results were implemented, and he himself was sitting on hundreds of millions of dividends. After taking NAD+ precursor substances, Li Ka-shing in Hong Kong said that "it's like returning to 20 years old". This sentence was covered by Hong Kong media. Li himself also invested 20 million US dollars to enter the aging control sector.

Geneharbor, a supplier of laboratory raw materials, has upgraded its "Aimuyin" series to the third generation, from offline Watsons stores to domestic online platforms such as JD.com. According to the 5-year observation of CITIC Finance and Economics, the cost of raw materials related to Aimine has been decreasing year by year in recent years. With the expansion of the domestic 100-ton factory, it is expected to continue to expand into second- and third-tier cities, sinking into the blue ocean market with a valuation of up to 100 billion .

The technical potential of NAD+ and the popularization of Amylin-like achievements have once again made the research on the exchange transfusion mechanism the focus of current "aging biology" research.

In July, the originator of this study, Professor Conboy and his wife from the University of Berkeley, published a new study in "Nature". They injected 7.5% of the blood of an old mouse (equivalent to 78 years old in humans) into a 3-month-old juvenile. In the mice, it was surprising to find that the young mice seemed to exchange their age with the old mice, which further confirmed the increase in the concentration of "aging substances" in the blood and the decrease in the level of NAD+ on the body's liver, kidney, heart, muscle and other indicators. influences.

Figure: After 3-week-old mice were injected with senescence proteins, they exchanged ages with older mice

In the future, where the research on exchange transfusion will develop, and how to improve the physical health of ordinary people, there is still time to give the answer. However, it is certain that with the popularization of this biotechnology, everyone seems to need to redefine aging.