Many hopeful about Russian scientist’s anti-aging drug

A Russian scientist says he has beaten the problem of aging and in just a few years the medicine that stops it will go on sale.

Professor Vladimir Skulachev says he managed to find an anti-oxidant that stops the gradual deterioration of health caused by age.

It looks complicated and it certainly is. For Vladimir Skulachev it is almost a life's work. Two more years of testing and the doctor thinks he will have finally cracked the enigma of aging.

Apparently it's all about how oxygen reacts in the body.

“99% of the time oxygen turns into harmless water, but there's that one percent that turns into a super-oxide that later turns into very poisonous elements,” Vladimir Skulachev, Professor of Bioenergetics, reveals. “So the task was to find an anti-oxidant that stops that process.”

And hence, according to the professor, it would also stop people from getting old.

He has been working to prefect his treatment for more than 40 years. The difficult part of the process has been to try and prevent any side-effects, he notes.

Colleagues around the world think Dr Skulachev is on to something.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Gunter Blobel, M.D., Ph.D. at Rockefeller University, believes Skulachev’s theories look very realistic.

“It has been shown that oxidative damage is huge. But we do not have an anti-oxidant of the type that Skulachev has developed. He coined the term bioenergetics. He is clearly the world’s best bio-chemist and bio-energetic scientist,” Blobel stated.

The compound has already undergone animal testing and the results appear promising.

Rats that have been given the drug are much more lively than those not treated.

“Finally, we hope that we will manage to convince people that a single pill treats many threats of aging. So, it must be doing something with the aging itself,” Maksim Skulachev Cand. Sc. (Biology) explains. “Then, if authorities will accept this logic, maybe we could somehow market it as anti-aging drug.”

After success with eye drops in animals, the inventor tried the medicine on his own cataract.
Six months later, his physician told him his cataract was gone.

Thousands are queuing to take part in the clinical trials, which have just begun. But it will be a few years before Dr Skulachev's discovery reaches the shelves of an average pharmacy.

Some have already dubbed the drug a panacea. And if it lives up to its promise, the treatment should have an effect on the diseases of aging and bring with it the prospect of a longer and better quality of life.