Stem Cells Revive Aging Blood Cells in Mice

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have rejuvenated aged blood stem cells in mice—leading to the possibility they could do the same thing for humans. Megan Messerly, writer for the Daily Californian, reported that the scientists’ treatment appeared to make the elderly mice more active than they normally would have been and to have stronger immune systems.

Danica Chen, an assistant professor of nutritional science and toxicology and the principal investigator of the study, said, “In the past 20 years there have been breakthroughs in understanding aging at the molecular level. The most exciting idea is that aging is a regulated process—we used to think aging was a random process.”

Messerly wrote that Chen’s lab was able to observe and manipulate the aging process in mice through a two-part experiment. The study focused around the SIRT3 gene which produces a protein, long thought to play a crucial role in preventing the aging process and which helps blood cells cope with oxidative stress. When researchers removed the SIRT3 gene from old mice, their production of blood cells dropped. When they reintroduced the genes into the aged stem cells of the mice, their blood production went up.

Messerly quoted Katharine Brown, who co-authored the study and conducted the research as a UC Berkeley doctoral student, as making a distinction between improvements in healthspan and not necessarily lifespan. “Even in the normal aging system, you have reduced function of the blood system and decreased immune response, ” she said. “Those are just a ‘natural’ part of the aging process. Even if you’re healthy and much older, your blood system isn’t as highly functional.” Brown added, “There is good evidence to show that what we were seeing in mice can be (applied) to human beings.”