Swiss researchers develop method to slow ageing in mice

White hair - but how old is the mouse? Keystone / Friso Gentsch

Scientists from the University of Fribourg have discovered a mechanism with which they were able to reduce age-related inflammation in the rodents, thus slowing the ageing process.

At the end of the treatment, the mice showed better cognitive, visual and motor skills due to the drug improving their bodies’ cleansing system, the University of Fribourg said on Friday.

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Each of the body’s 15 trillion cells produces waste products that need to be recycled like any other waste. With increasing age, cells lose the ability to effectively eliminate the waste they produce.

As a result, chronic inflammation spreads. This is particularly noticeable in brain cells, where waste products accumulate which can lead to the death of the cells.

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The body’s waste recycling system is technically known as autophagy. The Fribourg researchers, led by Patricia Boya, discovered that cells maintain a different type of autophagy despite the ageing process: so-called mitophagy, which is focussed on the purification of mitochondria, the energy power plants in the cells.

In the study, the researchers treated ageing mice with the drug “Urolithin A”, which was already known to stimulate mitophagy. This reduced inflammation in the mice, with positive consequences for the brain.

These results were also obtained in cell cultures from older human donors. However, many more studies are needed to find out whether these results can actually be transferred to humans.

“The possibility of indirectly reducing age-related inflammation and disease by inducing mitophagy is a promising therapeutic approach that should be investigated further,” the researchers wrote in the study.

The results were published in a study in the journal Nature Communications.

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