E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSScientists may one day slow down aging with a simple injection of youthful stem cells. They’ve just proven this can be done in mice, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.
The mice, which had been engineered to mimic a human disease called progeria, would normally have grown old when they were quite young. But that changed when researchers injected muscle stem cells from healthy young mice into the bellies of the quickly aging mice. Within days, the doddering and frail mice began to act like they were living the storyline of “The Strange Case of Benjamin Button” as they started looking and acting younger.
“It was mind boggling,” said study co-author Johnny Huard, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “When I saw them I thought, ‘Oh my God, I must have made a mistake and put the normal mice in the wrong cage.’ But they were indeed the mice we’d injected with the stem cells.”
Normal mice live about two years, Hoard explained. But mice with progeria age very quickly and die by the time they are 21 days old. Somehow the muscle stem-cells from the younger mice managed to reverse that premature aging process – at least temporarily.
The stem-cell injected mice didn’t live as long as normal mice, but they did survive about three times as long as would have without the treatment. Huard suspects if he re-injected the mice they would live even longer.
Huard and his colleagues aren’t exactly sure what’s happening, but they’ve got some theories. Scientists have discovered that we grow frail when our stem cells age and lose the ability to self-repair. These “tired stem cells” divide slowly, Huard explained.
He and his colleagues suspect the same thing happens, just more quickly, in mice and people with progeria.
“People with progeria look like they are in their 80s when they are 20 years old,” Huard said. “Their skin looks very wrinkled and old when they are very young.”
One of the biggest surprises for Huard and his colleagues was the impact on the brain from muscle stem cells injected into the belly. Even though the cells didn’t get to the brain, they still improved its health.
“The number of blood vessels in the brains of progeria mice are significantly reduced,” Huard said. “But when you inject stem cells from a normal mouse into the belly of the progeria mouse, the number of blood vessels increases.”
That means that the normal stem cells must be releasing some kind of protein that spurs the growth of healthy cells, Huard said.
Huard can the big implications of his research.
“There’s a lot of money being spent in the world trying to delay aging,” he said. “It would be fantastic if we can apply this to human beings. It’s a very simple approach.”
Huard can’t say how far in the future this might be, but his group has been using muscle stem cells to repair damaged hearts, bones, and cartilage.
One day it might be standard for people to stash away stem cells when they are young so they can use this fountain of youth elixir when they start aging, he said.
If it was up to you, how long would you want to live? Tell us on Facebook.
More from Vitals:
Senior moment? Nope, just thinking
Peanuts in green beans? Weird food mix-ups spark recalls
Chicken jerky treats sicken 353 dogs
Leave a Comment:
OK, so this may be great for people with "progeria" - but does it do anything to people with normal aging? The article just says that it extended the extremely short life of the mice, not that it even gave them a normal life expectancy. So again - what would it do for normal aging?
It'll probably cause cancer in humans.
Stem cell therapy has been used for several years very successfully in other countries. Especially in fighting heart disease etc. As usual we are behind in the USA, the FDA preferring drugs that treat the symptoms but not the root of the problem. Of course big pharma might have something to do with this
Well since I've got a face that wore out three bodies and one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, all I can say is "sign me up". LOL
Sign me up - I'm all for it. Pump me full of stem cells, I want to see Haley's Comet a 3rd or even a 4th time.
Exactly... imagine how re-runs of the Brady Bunch or Cain's speeches I could catch!
LOL...now there's a bright side I didn't think of!
Just keep an open mind people, jeeeez! There is still hope that the human race can get smart enough to solve its problems. Then living longer would be nice, no?
Wow....just think...if you inject Mom Duggar with stem cells...give Dad Duggar some Viagra....they could potentially have a couple hundred kids!
Think of all the $$ to be made!!
Hopefully a cure for progeria afflicted children ????
The one thing planet Earth did not need were human beings. Not even one! The ancient human female correctly pointed out that human’s would never be able to make a contribution to the planet because there were simply nothing for us to do, look after, or care for. The best we would ever do for Mother Earth was to leave her, by dying.
Will you go first? My philosophy can't seem to wrap itself around non-existence. Not because I believe in anything, mind you. It's just all I've ever known (I think).
"The best we would ever do for Mother Earth was to leave her, by dying".
Never go over to hawaiianphilosophers' house for Jim Jones cool-aid.
If it actually IS a "Real Life Benjamin Button", I hope it's less boring than the movie. :-P
AUTHOR AND EDITOR FAIL - The title of the movie is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". Does anyone proof read and check for accuracy in journalism any more?
Of course they don't, Brad...why, that would mean they would have to be educated in order to write or comment on these articles! We can't have that now, can we? However, I see that Tim did use "than" rather than "then"...he gets points for that!
This should only be used in cases of a disorder, such as progeria, not as a means to prevent normal aging. We need fewer people on the planet, not more.
id rather they found a way to go back in time so we could fix our mistakes
Well said, farmer boy. The first thing I would do, would be to buy stock in Microsoft the minute it hit the market, LOL.
Oh, "Seriously," you should stop taking yourself so much so; and pay a little more attention to what all those "evangelicals" you despise actually believe before you attack them. The opposition to "stem cell research" involved ONLY the embryonic stem cells, which require destroying the human life of those cells. Conservatives, including any of the fundamentalist Christians I have read or heard, strongly support the use of stem cells from adult tissue, or the umbilical cord, or any other source which doesn't kill a person. If you paid any attention to the science you think "those people" reject, you'll see that the only beneficial results from stem cells so far have been from the non-embryonic ones, such as this project. While there may still be some ethical issues involving the perpetuation of the human life span, in general, conservatives and Christians support medical advances which maintain and increase the quality of human life.
As another poster pointed out since embryonic stem cells can come from frozen embryos why aren't christian conservatives fighting against IVF since some of those embryos will never be brought to term? Could it be cause some christian conservatives use the technology so are willing to overlook this? Because those embryos will most likely be destroyed in the future.
Circular reasoning. Do you think that is a coincidence considering that the last 8 years have provided a complete dearth of public funding for the ESC-variety? If you weren't keeping up with the news, a number of labs had to scramble to find ways of utilizing adult stemcells first since Bush killed any hopes of utilizing embryonic ones unless it came from the handful of strains that were already available.
Anyway, as I noted above, and C123 helpfully points out as well. The tissues used in embryonic stemcell research come from donations from fertility clinics and individuals.
If the tissues weren't going to be donated, they were going to be disposed of, or kept in indefinite cryo-storage.
So why haven't evangelicals come out against IVF?
The guys at Pitt need to share this with other institutes outside the US in the unlikely event one of the whack jobs gets elected.
Don't worry, the researchers will get courted by other countries without delay. Singapore and China are fantastic examples of enthusiastically supporting scientific endeavors the US happily shuns.
Fortunately for us, not everyone in the modern world longs for another Dark Ages.
Romney/Bachman "Dark Ages" 2012!!!!
Whoopie, hooray and goodie gumdrops! Another super-drug for the super-rich, greed-mongering, socially retarded and morally bankrupt 1%. I can't wait to see the price tag. As if giving the immortal corporations of the world personhood wasn't bad enough, now the scum that run them can go on and on. "Things they do seem awful c-c-c-cold. I hope I die before I get old..." -The Who (and me too)
Actually, stemcell looks to be something that will actually drop the floor out from under the costs of medical treatments and care.
Things like finding donors for organ transplants will likely become a thing of the past...and then transplants themselves even
Cancer treatment may one day be something as simple as an injection
Lastly, numerous age-related disorders like dementia, alzheimers, heart disease and treatments for strokes and numerous kinds of arthritis could be recovered from or prevented altogether.
Right now there are only super-expensive drugs that only serve to delay, stop or simply mask the symptoms. Stemcell treatment could actually be a legitimate cure.
This could be the great renaissance in medical treatments and greatly reduce healthcare costs for everyone.
For Children with Progeria I totally hope they can get this treatment... For the average human.. No thanks human beings just need to run their course and take care of the body you have.
What do you mean run their course?
Are you suggesting not utilizing stemcell treatment to extend life in general? Why not?
We use all sorts of medical technology to extend life right now. Mothers-to-be take prenatal vitamins, kids get vaccinated (if their parents aren't idiots), people take an anti-inflammatory if they have a fever (people used to die of the flu), an anti-diarrheal if you have the runs (people still die from the dehydration), antibiotics if you have a severe infection.
Honestly, you don't have to extend YOUR life if you don't want to. But don't you suddenly decide that you (or vote for someone whom) should be making decisions for how long other people should live based on your arbitrary standards.
Focus on controlling yourself and not other people. If more people in this world would respect each others autonomy, it would be a better place.
Perhaps we can inject stem cells into the atmosphere, to reverse climate change! Har-de-har har!
For the first (and hopefully only) time in my life, I wish I was a mouse!
It seems Ponce de Leon was looking in the wrong place.
Consider the moral implications- who should be given the chance to live longer? For example, would you want someone with schizophrenia to live longer with such a debilitating mental illness? How about a midget or someone disfigured like the 'elephant man'? Who gets to make such judgment calls?
I guess it would rather suck for someone sentenced to life in prison!
Hahahaha!
Wow, you've got a nice eugenics slant going there.
So Mr. Eichmann, what else do you have in store for your final solution?
I will say this...the quality of the postings in response to this article aren't nearly as annoying as the postings on most other articles are!
i heard madonna broke into the lab & guzzled a case of the stuff
I heard she broke into the lab and had sex with the mice
@ President Galt
That wasn't Madonna, that was Richard Gere
Interesting results in this experiment. However, it is still a large leap to thinking we can prevenmt aging. And if we can prevent aging, would it prevent ALL age related conditions and illnesses? What good would it do to not age if we continued to have debilitating arthitis? And would we have to go back into the employment force? What about re-education and how often for an individual living indefinitely? How long should we live in this world? Many questions to answer before we decide whether or not having something to extend life indefinitely is necessary and not destructful. And how much will it cost? Who will be chosen to continue if there is a limited amount for people? Who gets to live indefinitely?