Reverse ageing by boosting cells' energy factories

Just as a car's battery wears down with age, mitochondria, our cellular powerhouses, produce energy less efficiently as we get older.

Now, ageing mice have been given a new lease of life after being injected with a drug that jump-starts their mitochondria.

Mitochondria contain genes coding for proteins important in energy production. So Shaharyar Khan of Gencia Corporation in Charlottesville, Virginia, and colleagues wondered if boosting the activity of these genes might reverse decline.

They took a naturally occurring mitochondrial transcription factor called TFAM, which initiates protein synthesis, and engineered it to cross into cells from the bloodstream and target the mitochondria.

Aged mice given modified TFAM showed improvements in memory and exercise performance compared with untreated mice. "It was like an 80-year-old recovering the function of a 30-year-old," says Rafal Smigrodzki, also at Gencia, who presented the results at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence conference in Cambridge this month.