X-Message-Number: 18599 Subject: SF Gate: Top scientist to research anti-oxidants/UC Berkeley chemist opening firm From: "Peter Christiansen" <> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 14:36 -0800 FYI ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/02/19/MN234813.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, February 19, 2002 (SF Chronicle) Top scientist to research anti-oxidants/UC Berkeley chemist opening firm David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Bruce N. Ames, the controversial University of California biochemist and cancer researcher, has gone into the pep-pill business with fellow scientists, claiming that a combination of two widely sold dietary supplements can dramatically boost energy and improve memory in aging laboratory rats. "With the two supplements together, these old rats got up and did the Macarena," Ames was quoted as saying yesterday by a UC Berkeley spokesman. "The brain looks better, they are full of energy -- everything we looked at looks more like a young animal." Now, it remains for human tests to see if what works in rats is good for people, too. Ames and his colleagues are reporting on the results of their animal experiments -- and on the detailed chemistry behind their evidence -- in three scientific articles published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Along with the reports Ames announced that his family foundation, together with his colleagues and a businessman friend, had formed an Alameda-based company called Juvenon that will launch a series of carefully controlled human trials to confirm what they already believe are remarkable results from their pills. "I didn't really want to found a company, and I have no commercial interest in it myself," Ames said in an interview yesterday, "but we want to do really solid science in this venture because there's so much snake oil out there." Juvenon scientists have already gathered anecdotal evidence from more than 50 healthy older human subjects who volunteered to take the Juvenon combination of two anti-oxidant supplements informally, said a company statement. Ames is chairman of its Scientific Advisory Board. The volunteers have reported "a wide variety of positive effects," the company says, including: "Increased energy, elevated mood, steady emotional state, improved sleep, enhanced cognitive function, weight loss or improved weight control, decreased age pigment (lipofuscin) and lower blood pressure." The two dietary supplements for which Ames and his colleagues claim such remarkable results are anti-oxidants that are widely sold in health food stores and over the Internet. One compound is called alpha-lipoic acid, and the other is acetyl-L-carnitine. A check of Internet sources yesterday showed that the lipoic acid pills were advertised by one Web-based company at $37 for 60 capsules; the carnitine compound costs $56 for 100 capsules. The university has patented their use as a combination "to rejuvenate cells," said a UC Berkeley announcement, and Ames' company has licensed the patent from the university. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not regulate dietary supplements as it does drugs, it monitors them after they are marketed. "The presence of the FDA is a positive for Juvenon," said a company statement, "since it helps keep out copycat competitors that may use poor- quality compounds or whose dosages may not be clinically proven." A professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UC Berkeley, Ames is also a researcher at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute. Among his colleagues in the Juvenon venture is Tory M. Hagen, a biophysicist at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University and a former postdoctoral fellow working with Ames at Berkeley. Hagen is a co-author of the scientific reports being published today. In those experiments, the researchers say the two compounds have shown the ability to get rid of harmful chemicals called free radicals that tend to build up inside mitochondria, which are known as the "power plants" of cells in the body. Deterioration of mitochondria is an important cause of aging and the decline of memory and the body's energy, Ames and Hagen contend. Thirty years ago, Ames was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences after he developed a powerful test for cancer-causing chemicals based on their ability to disrupt the genes of bacteria. He won major medical awards and wide renown for publicly exposing the dangers of cancer in several brands of hair dyes, in a flame retardant once widely used for children's pajamas and in an insect pest-control fumigant called ethylene dibromide, or EDB. Later, however, many environmental activists stopped hailing him as a hero and turned against him when he argued against overly restrictive regulation of many pesticides. He said that solid evidence showed their cancer-causing effects were relatively insignificant, and that foods such as celery, bacon, cabbage, coffee, peanut butter and potatoes also contained carcinogens -- but not enough to be dangerous. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18599