Bone Marrow Transplant and Aging
There’s new evidence to suggest that transfusions of young tissue can stave off health problems for the elderly.
After a transplantation of a healthy young mouse’s bone marrow, older mice’s brain cells were better preserved and the mice had better memories and cognitive abilities than their elderly peers, according to research in the journal Communications Biology — raising the possibility of a future anti-aging treatment for humans.
It may be possible to mitigate transplantation risks by generating ‘personalized’ young hematopoietic stem cells from a patient’s own induced pluripotent stem cells41 (which would be rejuvenated during reprogramming), and delivering them in large numbers to competitively replace at least some of a patient’s endogenous hematopoietic stem cells. Based on our data, this rejuvenation technique could have long-term positive effects on aging, and perhaps slow the progression of aging-associated diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.”
We are examining the therapeutic benefit and feasibilities of animal studies of such findings.