Young blood is being trialed as a treatment for conditions like Alzheimer’s…But these studies rely on young people donating their blood: if this became the go-to therapy for age-related disease it would be difficult to get enough donations to fulfill demand.
The stem cells in our blood could provide an alternative approach.
…
[When Hartmut Geiger and his team at the University of Ulm in Germany] examined the bone marrow in mice, they found that older animals have much lower levels of a protein called osteopontin. To see if this protein has an effect on blood stem cells, the team injected stem cells into mice that lacked osteopontin and found that the cells rapidly aged.But when older stem cells were mixed in a dish with osteopontin and a protein that activates it, they began to produce white blood cells just as young stem cells do. This suggests osteopontin makes stem cells behave more youthfully.
…
Until now, most efforts to use blood as a rejuvenation agent have focused on plasma…But Geiger thinks the cells in blood might play a key role, because they are better able to move into the body’s tissues.
[The study can be found here.]
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Old blood can be made young again and it might fight ageing
For more background on the Genetic Literacy Project, read GLP on Wikipedia.
