A study, led by the Spaniard Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, manages to stop the biological markers that indicate the passage of time in animals
A team of researchers from the Salk Institute, led by the Spaniard Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, has managed to safely and effectively reverse the cell aging process in a group of mice and return, even partially, the cells of these animals to their juvenile state. This technical achievement, published this Monday in the magazine ‘Nature Aging’, represents a step forward in understanding how to stop (and reverse) the effects of the passage of time in animals.
To understand the success of this study, it is worth taking a step back and seeing what happens when we age. Every cell in our body has a built-in ‘molecular clock’ that records the passage of time. These ‘gears’ secrete different patterns of chemicals (also called epigenetic markings) depending on how old we are. But what happens if we change the mechanism that regulates these clocks? As the new study reveals, adding a mixture of four reprogramming molecules (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and cMyc, also known as “Yamanaka factors”) to cells can rset these epigenetic marksto their original patterns and thus ‘recover’ part of the original rhythm of these mechanisms.
This technique has been tested in a group of mice They were 15 to 25 months old, the equivalent of the age of 50 to 80 years in humans. According to the study, the animals that underwent the treatment showed youth-like characteristics of his kind. In both the kidneys and the skin, the epigenetics of the treated rodents more closely resembled the epigenetic patterns seen in more juvenile animals. When injured, the skin cells of those treated had a greater ability to proliferate and were less likely to form permanent scars. Furthermore, the metabolic molecules in the blood of these animals did not show normal age-related changes.
New scientific tool
In practice, so that we understand each other, scientists have managed to temporarily convert adult cells into stem cells. At least as far as stages of development are concerned. But beyond this, the great novelty presented by this study is not only the success of the technique itself, but also the proof that its use is safe and effective in the long term (between seven and ten months). This, as explained by the authors of the experiment, would open the door to an infinity of applications in the treatment of age-related degenerative diseases.
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“We are elated to be able to use this approach throughout life to delay aging in animals. The technique is safe and effective in mice,” explains scientist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, professor at the Salk Gene Expression Laboratory and co-author of the recently published study. “In addition to addressing age-related diseases, this approach can provide biomedical community a new tool to restore tissue health and from the organism to improve cell function and resilience in ddifferent disease situationsas in the case of neurodegenerative diseases”, comments the expert.