CELLS GOING BACK IN TIME

[00:00:00]This man won a Nobel Prize for figuring out how to reverse aging inside human cells. And this year, they're finally testing it on real people. If it works, there's a chance we could be the last generation that ever grows old. His name is Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher from Japan. Back in 2006, he took four genes and put them into a human skin cell, and something crazy happened. The cell started going backwards in time. It turned into a blank cell that could become anything at all, like a lung or a heart. And he won the Nobel Prize for it in 2012. But then, he hit a wall. When the cells went back that fast, they started growing tumors. So, it was a beautiful discovery, but it just wasn't safe to try on people. That's when a man named David Sinclair from Harvard stepped in. He took those same four genes, but he removed the one most likely to cause tumors. Then, instead of sending the cells all the way back, he only sent them halfway, and the old cells slowly turned into younger cells.

[00:00:51]Then, he started testing it on animals, and the results were wild. He brought back sight in blind mice, and then in old monkeys, too. So, it was actually working. For now, the FDA has approved human trials, and they already started.

[00:01:03]Most drugs fail at this stage, so nothing is promised yet. But they're starting with the eyes, just as a first step. And if it works there, the plan is to use it on the whole body to fight aging itself.