King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital and Chulalongkorn University (CU) yesterday denied claims that they have been experimenting with “rejuvenating DNA” on people after someone said they had received such treatment there.
The statement issued by both parties stated that rejuvenating DNA was created by a specialist team of CU’s Faculty of Medicine under the REjuvenating DNA by GEnomic Stability Molecules or RED-GEMs project, but it has not yet been applied to humans.
The treatment can allegedly reverse ageing in animals, according to reported laboratory tests. The research team expects the RED-GEMs treatment will be able to treat various age-related conditions and illnesses and, to a degree, restore some youthfulness to ageing societies.
The team said they require approval from a research ethics committee before it can conduct clinical trials. At present, the team does not have sufficient data on the efficacy and safety of the RED-GEMs treatment if it were to be used on humans, the statement said.
The hospital and the university denied using RED-GEMs on any patients.
The treatment was pioneered by Prof Apiwat Mutirangura, a specialist in molecular genetics and epigenetics and the head of the Department of Anatomy of CU.
He announced the success of the use of RED-GEMs on mice last July. The team found that the ageing cells of mice were reversed.
They also discovered that the functions of mice’s brains that had become ineffective could be restored, they claimed.
The team expects to conduct a test on larger animals, including macaques, to study the long-term effects of the treatment before running clinical trials.