Fountain of youth? Young stem cells make rapidly aging mice live longer and healthier
January 4, 2012
Stomach muscles of 15-day-old normal mice (left) showing healthy blood vessels, compared to 15-day-old progeria mice (center; arrows indicate missing blood vessels), and aged progeria mice treated with young stem cells (right) (credit: Mitra Lavasani et al./Nature Communications)
Mice bred to age too quickly (progeria) seemed to have sipped from the fountain of youth after scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine injected them with stem cell-like progenitor cells derived from the muscle of young, healthy animals.
Instead of becoming infirm and dying early as untreated mice did, animals that got the stem/progenitor cells improved their health and lived two to three times longer than expected.
“Our experiments showed that mice that have progeria, a disorder of premature aging, were healthier and lived longer after an injection of stem cells from young, healthy animals,” said Dr. Laura Niedernhofer, associate professor in Pitt’s Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. “That tells us that stem cell dysfunction is a cause of the changes we see with aging.”
Typically the progeria mice die at around 21 to 28 days of age, but the treated animals lived far longer — some even lived beyond 66 days. They also were in better general health, the researchers said.
Unknown molecules from stem cells block aging
As the progeria mice age, they lose muscle mass in their hind limbs, hunch over, tremble, and move slowly and awkwardly. Affected mice that got a shot of stem cells just before showing the first signs of aging were more like normal mice, and they grew almost as large. Closer examination showed new blood vessel growth in the brain and muscle, even though the stem/progenitor cells weren’t detected in those tissues.
In fact, the cells didn’t migrate to any particular tissue after injection into the abdomen. “This leads us to think that healthy cells secrete factors to create an environment that help correct the dysfunction present in the native stem cell population and aged tissue,” Dr. Niedernhofer said. “In a culture dish experiment, we put young stem cells close to, but not touching, progeria stem cells, and the unhealthy cells functionally improved.”
The provocative findings urge further research, she added. They hint that it might be possible one day to forestall the biological declines associated with aging by delivering a shot of youthful vigor, particularly if specific rejuvenating proteins or molecules produced by the stem cells could be identified and isolated.
Ref.: Mitra Lavasani et al., Muscle-derived stem/progenitor cell dysfunction limits healthspan and lifespan in a murine progeria model, Nature Communications, 2012 [doi: 10.1038/ncomms1611] (open access)
Comments (2)
by Vstoriguard
One thing that’s always troubled me: can we deal with potential immortality if we have not already increased our intelligence?
http://www.amazon.com/Victor-Storiguard/e/B005JT22MG
by Khannea Suntzu
It should not be difficult to scale the experiments that yield this “uncanny tissue regenerative effect” and isolate it, or evolve means to mass produce this secretion. Then we must carefully seek to mass-produce the effective ingredient, or catalyst, or synergy itself and replicate it as a product. The problem is that the insurance industries, especially financial institutions benefiting from “the generational cycle of human attrition” are well aware of this. The actions of the insurance and pension industries speak louder than words – life extension is not a medical course of action. Why? Because it would unravel the predatory nature of our current death-ist economic paradigm. Our economies are based on constant flow of creation of new consumers and workers, and in particular on keeping these agents predictable, not-too-smart and easily replaced. There is an implicit need to have The Young compete over the scraps of The Entitled. It is endemic societal hazing – play by “our” rules and just maybe we’ll reward you.
Envision one day people escaping this cycle by getting their shit in order and retiring indefinitely. Like – a generation of very well-educated, very confident, very connected and fairly affluent people comparable to oh Jesse Ventura. Long lived tough and savvy people like that will “opt out” and say “no” to the established crap. And that is why the current geopolitical economic paradigm doesn’t look too fondly on life extension. It would be like someone ruining Their game of chairs by adding fresh chairs all the time, and getting people to stop playing the game all the time and walking away.
I do not have much trust in democracy and self-governance looking the the generational average morons in their 20s and 30s that are more interested in “cooking with the stars” than what’s really happening. But people in their 40s and 50s who suddenly grow a clue are often to physically feeble to start give a damn.
Right now the best thing that could happen to humanity is life extension. We don’t need much – just 20, 30 years for the average person. That would create hope. Expectations. Long term thinking. The feeling that yiou might have something to lose.
The feeling that “this crap before us may not be everything”. The feeling that if we actually play our cards, as a species, we might end up with something better than … fracking cyclical consumerism.