Pill of super-protective 'heavy' fat may treat degenerative diseases

Hydrogen, due to its lightness, is very mobile among organic compounds, especially when its partner has higher electronegativity, like oxygen. You can think of hydrogen as the scrawny kid that gets pushed around by all the larger atoms, and oxygen as the bully that always takes his lunch money (the electron). Whenever the environment is energetic enough to ionize one hydrogen, the result is like the tea party in Alice in Wonderland. The hydrogens switch seats, and just end up drinking the same tea out of broken teacups.

The theory here is that if you make some hydrogens less scrawny (deuterium), the other atoms will preferentially pick on the lighter hydrogens, avoiding the destruction of the really important hydrogen-bearing molecules, like the fats in cell membranes.

Sounds good so far. But what happens when the fat needs to be recycled, or the deuterium swaps out to a different molecule?

Replacing 50% of a mammal's hydrogen with deuterium will cause the animal to die, from symptoms resembling radiation sickness, because spindle formation in mitosis relies upon Van der Waals forces, which are reduced in deuterium-containing molecules.

We aren't actually sure what else might go wrong in selectively deuterating the human body. So I think if I needed additional protection from oxidative damage, I'd try injecting my liver with L-gulonolactone oxidase before eating heavy fats. I may be wrong. We'll see.

I actually spoke with one of the principals at the company last weekend. I'm still not entirely sure it's a real effect, but he was telling me that they have mouse models that are incredibly impressive. That said, cancer has been cured in mice many, many times.

The general idea is that if you prevent fatty acid radicals from arising in the first place, you radically improve cellular health. They argue that all sorts of things go wrong in a cell, but that the final reason a cell will die is because it loses the ability to cope with reactive species.

Fats are one major source of radicals, because once you get one radical, generating the next radical is an auto-catalytic event. That means one radical generates dozens of others. If you can prevent that single radical, you therefore have a huge impact, and deuterated are absolutely a way to reduce radical formation.

2 things on cost: because there is a single bond in the fats they are targeting that is far more likely to form a radical than the others, you only need a single position to be deuterated to have the effect. The principal's claim was that cost of deuterium was incredibly low, and that everything about the chemistry was scalable. He fully expected that the doses could be made at an affordable price point.

Like I said, it may not pan out, but it did sound worth pursuing. That safety study will also likely test efficacy to a certain extent (common in rare disease research). Could be pretty cool if it works!

As always for research at this stage, there is a significant chance that the treatment will not survive contact with reality. Most don't. That said, the mechanism is plausible enough, and more importantly, this is a serious and direct attack on a major mechanism of aging. Defeating aging is the most important thing in the world, and credible shots at doing so are rare and precious. Regardless of whether this particular therapy ends up working, I commend the people behind it, Robert Molinari, Mikhail Shchepinov, Robert de Jager and others.

It's a bit early to even crank the bait headline machine up, but I love "Pill Savior" articles.

Deuterium-containing fatty acids supplant hydrogen-containing in cell membranes despite heavy fat intake being 1-2% of toatl energy intake.

Sounds like trying to fix joint pain with chondroitin.

This angle of attack on degenerative disease seem likely to be, at best, modestly effective, yet expensive - like much of the supplement industry.

Wow. Wouldn't this also significantly reduce the likelihood of cancer?

Oh no, this could ruin death. Steve Jobs: '... because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent.'.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/06/steve-jobs...