Since the Nobel prize-winning work of Kroto, Smalley and Curl who first discovered C60, the buckminsterfullerene or ‘buckyball’ molecule, in 1985, the worlds of engineering, medicine, biochemistry, astrophysics and many other sciences have been excitedly exploring its immense potential.
For biological and medical researchers, the pivotal discovery has been C60’s remarkable antioxidant power. We can all include antioxidant foods such as fresh berries and certain vegetables in our diet, but our bodies continue to age and wear out, no matter how many blueberries we eat! However, the super-antioxidant powers of C60 – and in particular, pristine, high-grade C60 olive oil – have been shown to have far more dramatic effects on the ageing process.
Baati and his team (2012) already knew about C60’s antioxidant, antiviral, anti-tumour and other effects from the research of other teams around the world, but they were keen to test its safety. Working with laboratory rats, they found that animals given high-grade C60 oil lived around 90% longer than the control rats who were treated with water. The C60 oil was not only non-toxic – it nearly doubled the animals’ lifespan! They proposed that C60 oil’s high antioxidant activity in the body.
Chistyakov et al (2013) further surmised that it was this super-antioxidant activity that explained the longer lifespan and anti-ageing results observed by Baati and other researchers. Chistyakov’s team located C60’s key ‘oxygen-protective’ activity inside the vital powerhouses found in everybody cell – the mitochondria.
An extensive review of research into C60’s antioxidant and anti-ageing properties by Galvan et al in 2017 highlights numerous subsequent studies that support and expand upon Baati et al’s findings. The review describes C60’s applications in therapy as “multitudinous”, including new medicines and the treatment of cancers, neurological conditions, pneumonia, HIV and a wide range of oxidative, stress-related conditions.
Anti-ageing
As new anti-aging research is published, we’ll highlight key developments on our website, so keep visiting these pages to stay updated.
Brain function, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease Research
Bibliography
Baati T et al. The prolongation of the lifespan of rats by repeated oral administration of [60]fullerene Biomaterials (2012), doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials. 2012.03.036
Chistyakov VA, Smirnova YO, Prazdnova EV & Soldatov AV, BioMed Research International (3:821498) 2013, Possible mechanisms of fullerene C60 antioxidant action
Galvan YP, Alperovich I, Zolotukhin P, Mazanko M, Belanova A & Chistyakov V, Current Aging Science (09:999) 2017 Fullerenes as anti-ageing antioxidants