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
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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
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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. 
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Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle

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