24 Saturday April 9 2022 | the times
News
To someone settling uncomfortably
into middle age, with all its creaks,
strains and wrinkles, the tantalising
prospect of being able to reverse ageing
may have just moved a step closer.
Scientists claim they have taken skin
cells from a 53-year-old woman and
“rejuvenated” them to act as if they
were 30 years younger.
When applied to a simulated wound
in a laboratory, the cells behaved as if
they had been taken from a 23-year-old.
The technology could help in treating
cuts, burns and ulcers in future, re-
searchers in Cambridge said, adding
Healthy plant-based diets
‘cut risk of type 2 diabetes’
Kat Lay Health EditorA diet rich in coffee, nuts and other fruit
and vegetables may protect against
developing type 2 diabetes.
A study found that people whose diet
contained high levels of healthy plant-
based foods were less likely to be diag-
nosed with the condition.
However, an unhealthy plant-based
diet did not offer the same benefits, the
team from the Harvard TH Chan
School of Public Health found.
The group with the most healthy
version of a plant-based diet had about
a 30 per cent lower risk of developing
type 2 diabetes than those with the least
healthy version. Both groups con-
sumed some animal products.
Professor Frank Hu, who led the
research, said: “A key message from the
study is that not all plant-based diets or
vegetarian diets are healthy and it’s
important to pay attention to quality of
plant foods not just quantity when
following a vegetarian diet.”
The study in the Diabetologia journalused blood samples and diet question-
naire data from 10,684 health profes-
sionals in the US. Most were white and
middle-aged, with an average BMI
(body mass index) of 25.6, putting them
in the slightly overweight range.
They were given a score according to
whether their diets were mostly plant-
based, and also scored against adher-
ence to both “healthy” and “unhealthy”
plant-based diets.
Healthy plant-based diets included
plenty of whole grains, fruits, vegeta-
bles, nuts, legumes, vegetable oils and
tea or coffee. Unhealthy plant-based
diets had high levels of refined grains,
fruit juices, potatoes, sugar-sweetened
beverages and sweets or desserts.
Hu said: “While it is difficult to tease
out the contributions of individual
foods because they were analysed
together as a pattern, individual metab-
olites from consumption of polyphe-
nol-rich plant foods like fruits, vegeta-
bles, coffee, and legumes are all closely
linked to healthy plant-based diet and
lower risk of diabetes.”Raging beak Pheasants were in the mood for sparring on the North York MoorsHoly grail of anti-ageing comes step closer
that they hope to repeat their experi-
ments on liver, heart and brain cells.
Age-related decline leads to a range
of diseases. Scientists hope that they
will one day be able to rejuvenate
human cells to delay or even reverse
this decline.
Reversing ageing, both to rejuvenate
your bodily functions and reduce the
outward signs of ageing such as wrin-
kles is, in a literal sense, seen as the Holy
Grail. Jeff Bezos is among the tech bil-
lionaires backing Altos Labs, a new
$3 billion project that has poached
leading scientists and Nobel laureates
to fund research into reversing ageing.
Professor Wolf Reik is one of thesescientists. Before joining the Altos Labs,
based in Cambridge, he worked on the
research into human skin cells at the
Babraham Institute, also in Cambridge,
which was published this week.
The technology is at an early stage
and there are a number of challenges to
be overcome before it could be trialled
on a living human being.
Scientists have been working for
decades on converting specialised cells
into stem cells, a branch of inquiry that
flourished after the birth of Dolly the
cloned sheep in 1996.
Stem cells act like a blank canvas and
can theoretically be programmed to
grow into any form of tissue required,such as muscle or nerve cells. It has
proved fiendishly difficult, however.
A team from the Babraham Institute
modified the process used to convert
specialised cells into stem cells. Instead
of placing the human skin cells in a
chemical solution for 50 days — which
erases the cells’ original programming
— they did so for only about 12 days.
This ensured the cell could be rejuve-
nated without permanently erasing its
original programming as a skin cell.
Reik told the BBC: “We have been
dreaming about this kind of thing.
Many common diseases get worse with
age and to think about helping people
in this way is super exciting.”The study, published in the peer-re-
viewed journal eLife, said the cells pro-
duced “youthful levels of collagen”, an
important protein in repairing wounds.
A lack of collagen can contribute to
wrinkles. The scientists have done no
work on cosmetic applications, but Dr
Diljeet Gill, who led the research, said it
was an interesting possibility.
The process used to create the cells is
linked with a high cancer risk, which
means scientists need a safer alter-
native before transferring it to a clinical
setting. Applying the technology in
humans was a “long way off”, according
to Professor Robin Lovell-Badge of the
Francis Crick Institute in London.Kaya Burgess Science Reporter
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