With the ageing population constantly on the lookout for that ever illusive youth pill, and every pharmaceutical company spending millions on ways to find the answer, it would seem there are a couple of scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts that are slightly ahead of the game.

I say game because with any new research program that inevitably costs millions of dollars it’s always a huge gamble. Especially when you consider only a mere 10% of this type of pharmaceutical trial truly succeed to breakthrough status. One half of the gifted pair is Harvard Medical School scientist David Sinclair, 38. He is the founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on discovering and developing cures for age related diseases in a pill form. Leaving his native Australia after finishing his Phd, he then went on to research the genetics of ageing in an MIT lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts well known as a flourishing biotech industry hub.

It was here that he made the discovery that the genes that control ageing were activated by a red wine molecule called resveratrol. The study received wide attention and it was then that Christof Westphal, the second half of this dream team decided to have a closer look. Westphal an extraordinarily talented scientist in his own right however did not make his fortune on the back of his M.D.-Ph.D., but as a venture capitalist. In a recent report from ABC News, Westphal describes how his first meeting with Sinclair failed to go as smoothly as it could have. “There was a little bit of a chess match at the beginning, where we were all trying to figure each other out,” he said. Fortunately, it didn’t take them long to overcome any doubts about each other and soon enough Westphal and Sinclair became business partners. But even with Westphal´s healthy investment they still needed further backing. "It takes tens of millions of dollars to set up a company like Sirtris, and ultimately hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a drug,” said Westphal. So with this massive amount of investment put into a project they would have to feel pretty confident that these anti ageing drugs will work. “If we are right,” said Wesphal, “these drugs will be enormously successful and treat very important diseases” So what sparked this muti-million dollar project? It turns out that while conducting research on the genetics of aging, mice received a dosage of resveratrol and they lived 30 percent longer than the mice that didn’t. In fact not only did they live longer but they lived healthier! Scientists have known for years that the aging in animals can be slowed down by caloric restriction, in other words if you restrict the calorie intake a mouse gets throughout its lifespan by 30 percent then they will live 30 to 50% longer. But who wants to live a life of restricted eating and drinking? Sinclair explains, “Control rats that are on a normal diet have cancer and are dying from all sorts of horrible diseases, while the rats on the calorie restricted diet are running around the cage free of diseases.”

Even though scientists have been fully aware of this result, no one knows exactly why it happens but they are constantly conducting research experiments to fi nd out. This is where our super scientist Sinclair thinks he has the answer. He believes it’s a gene which is activated when your diet is restricted this in turn produces an enzyme to fi ght off disease. So basically if you live your entire life on a calorie restricted diet this particular gene will go into over drive pumping up your cells to be stronger and healthier. Sounds great, but just because it works in mice doesn’t necessarily mean it will work in humans.

Well, we should have some idea by the end of the year according to Sinclair who says there are currently human trials taking place. Ideally, if we take the right amount of resveratrol (and that is the million dollar question, how much is the right amount?) we wouldn’t need to live with a strict calorie controlled diet to extend and/or live a healthier life. This is why Sinclair and Wesphal are proposing to pack a perfectly balanced pill full of health promoting resvertrol to be taken once a day. Then we can live our lives with the freedom to eat what we want, when we want without the harmful side effects.

Getting back to the gambling part, there are scientists who think this is very risky business and that all this excitement could just be another dead end. Apparently there have been several fi ndings similar to this one that did not live up to the hype. But even if these two are right and resveratrol does work in supplement form, what are the health risks? Unfortunately, no one can answer that yet because there is no safety data recorded. It is possible to purchase a lower dose reveratrol at health food stores but once again there is no evidence that these are benefi cial or whether they are safe. Alternatively, we could take the ulterior route and drink 200 glasses of red wine, per day, apparently the amount needed to gain the health benefi ts of resveratrol from red wine. This defi nitely seems a little excessive and you would imagine that the side effects would far outweigh the benefi ts. Fortunately Sinclair and Westphal are so confi dent that they have found the key as Sinclair puts it, “I think the biology is very strong, and so I am willing to bet my career that it is likely to be right,” he said.