Three reports describe how age-related
defects in the muscle and brain of the mouse may be reversed by circulating through
them the blood from young mice.
by John
Tyburski
Copyright © Daily
Digest News, KPR Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
The writer
of Leviticus once wrote, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood… (Lev
17:11)” Now three new studies reveal that the blood from young animals may
partially reverse the effects of aging in older animals. The three independent
reports, two published this week inScience and one in Nature,
all show reversal of muscular and nervous system aging after circulating the
blood of young mice through the old mice tissues.
In one of the Science articles,
Manisha Sinha and colleagues at Harvard University identified a role for growth
differentiation factor 11 (GDF11), a protein that circulates in the blood, in
skeletal muscle rejuvenation. The researchers determined that infusions of
young-mouse blood and supplementation with synthetic GDF11 resulted in similar
outcomes in older mice, including reversal of functional impairments and
restored genomic acitivy in muscle stem cells. Also observed were increased
strength and endurance exercise capacity with GDF11 supplementation.
“It’s really
exciting,” said Amy Wagers of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, senior author of
this report. “It says there’s a coordination of signals through the blood
system that’s affecting aging in many different organs.”
In a second report also
published in the same issue of Science, Lida Katsimpardi, Wagers,
and coworkers found similar rejuvenating effects of GDF11 and young blood in
the aged mouse central nervous system. They showed that factors in young blood
induced repair of brain blood vessels that ultimately allowed the old mice to
exhibit neurogenesis and improved odor discrimination. They showed that GDF11
alone can exert these effects. The researchers are hopeful that the
ground-breaking findings will ultimately lead to new therapies for treating
age-related neurological disorders.
In a third study published
this week in the journal Nature, Saul Villeda and fellow scientists
at Stanford University and the University of California-San Francisco examined
the effects of supplementing the blood of old mice with young mouse plasma, the
liquid, non-cellular portion of blood, in a specific brain region called the
hippocampus. The hippocampus is important in learning and memory and is the
site of extensive studies on the ability of the brain to form new connections,
or “neuroplasticity.”
Villeda and
colleagues observed both structural and cognitive enhancements in the
hippocampus of old mice given young mouse plasma. They determined that the
effects are at least partially mediated by a protein called cyclic AMP response
element binding protein, a protein important in gene transcription.
“It was as
if these old brains were recharged by young blood,” said senior author Tony
Wyss-Coray, neurology professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Efforts are
underway to study whether similar benefits may be achievable in humans.
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