SYNDROME Pinnacle 2003 They were promised a miracle cure for the deadly diseases destroying their lives. It seemed too good to be true, but to the desperate and dying it was the only chance for survival. Now they’re part of a bizarre secret experiment that reverses the aging process – an experiment gone out of control. In her mid-thirties, Alexa Hampton runs her own interior design firm in New York’s Soho and has a daily run to keep fit. But now her world is narrowing as a childhood heart mishap increasingly threatens to lethally impact her life. Then out of nowhere her black-sheep younger brother appears and insists she go to a clinic in New Jersey to enter stem-cell clinical trials that are working wonders. The clinic is owned by her brother’s boss, the eccentric millionaire Winston Bartlett. Also interested in the clinic is the medical reporter Stone Aimes, who’s hoping to penetrate Bartlett’s veil of secrecy and find out what’s going on there. He has personal as well as professional reasons for wanting to get closer to Winston Bartlett. He is also a long-ago lover of Alexa’s and still carrying something of a torch for her though they have long been out of touch. As Alexa investigates the clinic, their paths cross and together they slowly uncover the horrifying truth about what can happen when stem-cell technology is taken to its ultimate limit. A bizarre secret experiment to reverse the aging process has gone out of control. Winston Bartlett’s young mistress, the TV personality Kristen Starr, had an anti-aging procedure that went awry and now all her cells are being replaced with new. The side effects are horrific. No one can stop what is happening: she is growing younger, destined to become a child again. Alexa and Stone become prisoners in the clinic and then Bartlett and his Dutch medical researcher Karl van der Vliet begin a bizarre experiment on Alexa, hoping to produce antibodies to save Kristen, and Bartlett. In a stunning, blazing finale, Alexa turns the tables on them all, only to discover that she’s now, suddenly unlike anyone else who has ever lived. Tags: Medical Thriller, Heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Stem Cells, Aortic Stenosis, Medical Columns, Aging, Fountain of Youth, Regenerative Medicine