David Sinclair said there is a switch in the human body to make a 100-year-old young again. He says he can create sperm and an egg from human skin cells, fertilize them, and clone a human. He claimed to have created “Mini-human brains” in his lab that are aged artificially to mimic 80-year-old brains, and they show signs of diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s.
David Sinclair, a Harvard biologist, said he and his team found a way to reverse aging in the eyes of mice, suggesting that it could also happen in humans. In 2022, Sinclair and his team at Harvard Medical School published their findings, in which they believe that epigenetic changes—and not just changes to the DNA—affect aging.
They discovered a way to “reset” the age of a mouse’s eye using three specific genes (— Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4, together named OSK). By reprogramming the eye, they were able to reverse its age by 80%, helping the mice regain their vision.
Sinclair believes that this means there might be a way to make older people feel young again because the information needed to be young is still in the body.
David Sinclair mentions that they found a “universal reset switch,” which means they can apply this technique to other parts of the human body, like skin and muscles. Essentially, they are turning on a program that makes older cells act younger. He believes that one day it might be possible to reset the age of the entire body, and they have already succeeded in mice. Now, they are focused on how soon they can do this for humans.
On Ed Mylett’s podcast, David Sinclair talked about a study conducted by Steve Horvath and Greg Fahy during the early months of the pandemic. In this study, they treated people for a year with a mix of metformin, a bit of growth hormone, and DHEA (hormone that helps produce testosterone and estrogen) to manage some side effects of growth hormone that could lead to type 2 diabetes. (Source)
Dr. Greg Fahy, a California-based aging researcher, presents a cocktail of compounds that reactivates the thymus, an organ crucial for training immune cells to combat pathogens, and rejuvenates the body. They found that, after the treatment, the biological “clock” of the body had reversed by more than two years.
Dr. Fahy said that participants were biologically younger at the end of the trial than they were at the beginning. Dr. Fahy adds that there was an age reversal of about two-and-a-half years over the course of the year-long treatment. Thus, although a year had passed during treatment, the participants were still a year-and-a-half younger than when they started the trial, according to Horvath’s aging clock. The study participants were also still two-and-a-half years younger at the end of the trial than they would have been had they not participated.
At first, Sinclair thought that two years wasn’t a huge change, but then he realized that if this could be done every year, it would be really interesting because it would mean people could literally age in reverse.
While he isn’t sure about achieving immortality, he would be happy with just an extra 10 years of healthy life—or even just two years. He emphasizes that they are now at a point where they can control aging in the lab, being able to speed it up or slow it down.
Mini-Human Brains
Sinclair describes how he can take a person’s skin cells and reprogram them into pluripotent stem cells, meaning these cells can become any type of cell in the body. He explains that it’s biologically possible to create sperm or eggs from a person’s skin cells, potentially allowing for cloning, though he clarifies that doing this is illegal and he wouldn’t actually perform such an experiment.
He mentions the possibility of using these stem cells to create organs. In his lab, they can grow miniature organs, including “mini-brains,” from human cells. These mini-organs can be used for personalized drug testing and research, allowing scientists to understand how diseases might affect a specific individual’s organs and respond to treatments.
Sinclair explains how his team grows “mini-brains” in the lab. “We’ve got them from people that are predisposed to Alzheimer’s or not,” he said.By artificially aging these mini-brains to an equivalent of 80 years old within a few months, they induce Alzheimer’s and dementia-like symptoms in the lab.
Mini-Human Brains
Sinclair describes how he can take a person’s skin cells and reprogram them into pluripotent stem cells, meaning these cells can become any type of cell in the body. He explains that it’s biologically possible to create sperm or eggs from a person’s skin cells,… pic.twitter.com/ZwedNuWgSy
— Vicky Verma (@Unexplained2020) October 22, 2024
Reversing Aging in the Lab
Using a process that activates three embryonic genes (OSK genes: Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4), Sinclair’s lab is able to reverse the aging process in these mini-brains. Remarkably, when they reprogram the brains to a younger state, the Alzheimer’s symptoms disappear, and the brains regain their electrical activity.
The same age-reversal techniques have been tested in mice. By allowing mice to age or accelerating the aging process and then reversing the age of their brains, the researchers observed that the mice regained their memory and learning abilities, suggesting potential breakthroughs for human applications.
From David Sinclair’s Instagram post:
Looks like we finally have control over the aging process in the human brain, at least in these mini-human brains. These cute little fellas, called organoids, actually have brain waves! They take a few months to grow, coaxed from reprogrammed human skin cells. Some of the organoids we grow have a mutation that accelerates Alzheimer’s in people, allowing us to study the effect of aging & age reversal in the context of this terrible disease. We are excited about the possibility of reversing the age of the brain to recover the ability to heal, learn, and recall lost memories!
What might these mean for humans?
Dr. Santosh Kesari, a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, and Regional Medical Director for the Research Clinical Institute of Providence Southern California, spoke about mice reverse aging study. He said it helps us understand aging better, especially how we can measure it at the DNA level.
He explained that aging isn’t just about mutations in our DNA, which cause age-related diseases. Instead, it’s more about how the DNA is read as we get older. This affects aging in a big way. The study opens up new ways to think about aging and how to target it with drugs that influence how cells read DNA.
Since the study was done on animals, the next step is to figure out how humans age in the real world. Dr. Kesari mentioned that scientists need to find the right tests and ways to track unhealthy aging.
He also said that scientists will need to do smart studies to find biomarkers — signals that show we’re slowing aging in a good way. The goal is to find out what these markers are and which drugs can be used to test them.
Finally, Dr. Kesari emphasized that we can’t wait decades to study aging. The challenge is to find quick, reliable markers in humans to test drugs and see if they are helping with age-related conditions. (Source)
What might these mean for humans?
Dr. Santosh Kesari, a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, and Regional Medical Director for the Research Clinical Institute of Providence Southern California, spoke about mice reverse aging study. He said it… pic.twitter.com/E4DGWXLuBc
— Vicky Verma (@Unexplained2020) October 22, 2024
Serious Allegations
Dr. Brad Stanfield @BradStanfieldMD, M.D., a Primary Care Physician from Auckland, New Zealand made a video “The David Sinclair $720,000,000 Train Wreck!” where he discusses the controversies and criticisms surrounding David Sinclair, particularly with the compound resveratrol.
The David Sinclair (@davidasinclair) $720,000,000 Resveratrol Train Wreck
Video shoutouts:
– Prof. Matt Kaeberlein (@mkaeberlein)
– Prof. Brian Kennedy (@BKennedy_aging)
– Dr. Peter Attia (@PeterAttiaMD)
– Prof. Richard Miller
– Prof. Jeffery Flier (@jflier) pic.twitter.com/vLKyvkWJCq
— Dr Brad Stanfield (@BradStanfieldMD) March 10, 2024
Here is the video breakdown where Dr. Stanfield discussed Sinclair’s methods which he finds wrong :
-Sinclair co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, which was bought by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for $720 million in 2008. However, subsequent research failed to replicate Sinclair’s findings, leading to significant skepticism.
-GSK couldn’t reclaim their investment due to what was perceived as Sinclair’s plausible deniability through scientific missteps or errors in his research.
-Other scientists, like Matt Kaeberlein, have criticized Sinclair’s methods and results, pointing out that many of the lifespan extension effects could not be consistently replicated.
-There’s mention of Sinclair’s involvement with another company, Elysium Health, selling a product called Basis, which contains nicotinamide riboside, another compound linked to sirtuins and NAD+ levels, but not resveratrol.
-Sinclair has been promoting a study suggesting that a proprietary supplement could reverse aging in dogs, leading to public outcry and professional distancing from peers like Matt Kaeberlein and Jeffrey Flier, who have publicly criticized his methods and ethics.
-Despite initial hype, resveratrol’s benefits for longevity in humans remain unproven, with studies showing mixed or negative results, including potential harm like blunting exercise benefits and lowering testosterone.
-Stanfield critiques Sinclair’s pattern of hyping compounds (like resveratrol and NMN) through scientific publications and media appearances, followed by commercial ventures, which some see as a strategy to profit from the longevity market without solid scientific backing.
-There’s a growing concern about the normalization of “dishonesty in science,” as described by critics like Kaeberlein, where scientific claims are made for commercial gain without robust evidence.