Issue Date: September 10, 2006

Science

Can you live to 150?

Meet two scientists who think their research may lengthen your life.

By David Ewing Duncan

Quacks, hucksters and explorers long have promised eternal youth in a pill or in the waters of a magical fountain. Gods occasionally have granted long life. When the Sibyl of Cumae in Greek mythology asked Apollo for immortality, she forgot to ask for eternal youth. She grew so old and shrunken that she was put into a jar and eventually became just a voice.

Serious scientists usually pooh-pooh such talk, insisting that aging is inevitable. But now, two pioneering researchers in the field of longevity genetics believe that it is possible to create a pill to extend life span to 150 years or more. Here, meet these modern-day Ponce de Leons, and find out what makes them tick:

Cynthia Kenyon, professor and director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

Tall with a long, angular face and straight blond hair, Cynthia Kenyon, 52, says she would like to live to be 150: "Wouldn't you, if you were young and healthy?" She speaks in an excited whisper that sounds more like a teenager gushing than a distinguished molecular biologist.

A decade ago, Kenyon startled the scientific world when she doubled the life span of Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny roundworm, by altering a single gene. A decade later, she refined her process to extend the worms' lives by six times -- from 20 days to 126 days. In humans, this would be about 500 years! More amazing, the critters remained youthful even as they wriggled in broths of bacteria for most of their lives; diseases associated with aging were delayed or eliminated.

Kenyon's outward breeziness is at first surprising. But underneath that is a fiery ambition that has propelled her as one of a handful of women to reach A-list status among scientists, a group as rarified and competitive as top Hollywood directors or stars.

She has worked hard to get there. Although a fan of tennis and sailing, she admits she's a bit of a workaholic. "I have great passion for science," she says. "I think it's the most fun a person can have." She was a loner for much of her career, spending long hours in her lab and bicycling over steep San Francisco hills to work. She recently got engaged to a geneticist.

Now she makes one concession to her work: Most mornings, the two docs walk their German shepherd on their 10-acre spread in Marin County, over hills overlooking trees and wildlife. Then, they sit and eat a big breakfast to nurture longevity: green vegetables, fruit and meat.

"If you understand the mechanisms of keeping things repaired," Kenyon says, "you could keep things going indefinitely."

David Sinclair, associate professor and director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging, Harvard Medical School

Boyish and soft-spoken, David Sinclair, 37, is a bit of a contradictory character. A former windsurfer and marine biologist from Sydney, Australia, he has a surfer's laissez-faire attitude and a whiz kid's résumé. Having earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular genetics, he still had trouble finding a direction -- until his mother developed cancer.

Soon after, Sinclair heard a talk about longevity from MIT biologist Leonard Guarente. Impressed, Sinclair applied, and was accepted, to work in Guarente's lab. He sold his Mazda for a plane ticket to Boston.

Eight years later, in 2002, he made worldwide headlines by discovering that a chemical found in red wine has the power to increase the human life span.

"Plants churn out a chemical to increase cellular defenses and repairs when they're under stress -- drought, pests or harsh sun," he says. It exists in red wine, which is made from stressed grapes. Sinclair has since discovered it in 17 other plants, from broccoli to Brussels sprouts to strawberries. A new fountain of youth? Sinclair says maybe.

When he's not at Harvard, Sinclair spends time amid his rare books from the 16th century or with his wife, Sandra, and two daughters, 1 and 3. Heis now working to soup up his "super-longevity" molecule's potency before testing it in humans. Critics say it can't be done. To that, Sinclair raises a glass of red wine with a toast: "May we live long enough to know for sure."

David Ewing Duncan's latest book, "Masterminds: Genius, DNA, & the Quest to Rewrite Life," is now in paperback.

Illustration: Michael Sloan