TURNING BACK THE CLOCK THE NEW SCIENTIFIC SEARCH FOR YOUTH

LATER THIS YEAR, A HANDFUL OF PEOple with a rare eye condition will receive a novel injection that is designed to quite literally turn back time.

- ALICE PARK

Nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy—known as NAION—can cause sudden blindness when blood flow to the optic nerve is blocked. It’s not clear what causes the condition, although diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking are known to be risk factors. Some early evidence also suggests GLP-1-based weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Zepbound might also make patients twice as prone to the condition compared with those not taking the medications. Whatever its cause, there are no treatments for NAION. And if it strikes one eye, there is a good chance it will also affect the other, leading to complete blindness.

Scientists hope to change that with what is potentially much more than an eye treatment. The injection will test a new gene therapy that, instead of targeting specific genetic mutations that cause NAION, attempts to return certain optic-nerve cells to their pre-NAION state. It would be the equivalent of pressing a biological rewind button that takes the affected cells back to a younger condition—one in which they haven’t yet been struck by NAION or any other disease.

To some scientists, this sounds wildly ambitious. To others, extremely unlikely. Either way, it is just the kind of big—and controversial—swing that is emblematic of the growing field of science devoted to untangling and reversing what is a central fact of life: aging.

The particular therapy behind the NAION treatment is based on the work of David Sinclair, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research. He has spent decades trying to understand the wear-and-tear processes that age our cells and is convinced that many conditions that plague us—from joint issues to metabolic processes that break down as we get older—could be avoided and even reversed.