JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
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Stem cells: A fountain of youth? | Fox News
In the current study, the authors isolated a pool of stem cells from muscle tissue, noting that as the cells aged they lost their ability to proliferate, differentiate and regenerate.
Interestingly, by using mice with accelerated aging, they were able to show that transplantation of young muscle stem cells could rescue the aging mouse and increase its lifespan. Typically, these mice lived for an average of 21 days, but when the researchers transplanted young muscle stem cells into their bodies, their lifespan more than doubled.
Interestingly, further experimentation revealed the beneficial effect was not due to the cells themselves reconstituting the aging tissue, but rather due to a compound secreted by the young stem cells that actually induced changes in the old stem cells. The old cells, when cultured with the young cells, began to act young again, with increased proliferation and differentiation.