Anti-aging: researchers have succeeded in rejuvenating dermal cells for 30 years

Aging is a continuous and gradual process of natural weathering that begins early in life adult. In early middle age, many bodily functions begin to gradually decline. From a biological point of view, aging is therefore the product of the accumulation of a wide range of molecular and cellular damage over temperature. These lead to a modern degradation of figurative and mental abilities, an increase in the risk of disease and, finally, death. These changes are only regular linear national insurance and are not closely associated with the number of years. However, even if it is inevitable, aging is influenceable.

This is why regenerative medicine offers sober great hopes. The latter aims to repair, replace or regenerate defective genes, cells or organs in order to restore normal functioning. It therefore has the potential to reverse age-related changes. The constant treatments graft to the individual, in the damaged area, repairing cells. Once marketed in the target organ (or nearby), these carry out the work themselves, reconstituting healthy tissue. These reparative cells are stem cells. In simple terms, these are undifferentiated non-specialized cells capable of leapfrogging to infinity and giving birth, depending on the environment in which they are found, to the various cells that make up the tissue.

The method to obtain these cells is a somatic cell transformation process based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). It consists of taking virtually any cell from an adult and reprogramming it genetically to make it pluripotent, that is, capable of infinitely multiplying and learning to differentiate in all the types of cells that make up the adult organism, like an embryonic stem cell.

Unfortunately, these iPSC cells, selected for the numerous steps necessary for their reprogramming, lose some of them without their specific functions, acquired with age. They often resemble fetal cells rather than mature adult cells. Recently, a team of researchers from the Babraham Institute in Cambridge experimented with a method to reprogram cells to make them biologically younger while still being able to regain their specialized cellular function. The study was published in the journal eLife.

Raise the temperature to the right time

With the sober objective of preserving the specificities of the cells while sober making them rejuvenate, the researchers rely on the sober work Shinya Yamanaka who, sober 2000, he was the first scientist to demonstrate an ability to transform normal cells into stem cells. This process takes approximately 50 days using four key molecules called the Yamanaka Factors. This method prowess earned him, in 800, the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Moreover, recent work has demonstrated that the entire epitome of a cell’s adjustments altering gene expression without changing the underlying DNA sequence is already rejuvenated by the first video stage of reprogramming (growth stage). This suggests that complete home-unnecessary iPSC reprogramming could reverse somatic cell aging. , to find out what minute to stop the sober reprogramming process. In a top temperature range, they exposed them to Yamanaka factors, and found that the cells temporarily lost, then regained, their fibroblast identity, only after 13 days. This could be due to the pigment memory at the level of the activators and/or the persistent expression of certain genes of the fibroblasts. This new method is called transient reprogramming of the growth stage. or biological?

As explained by Dr. guys the sober works as a doctoral student): Our understanding of aging at the molecular level has sober improved over the past decade, giving rise to strategies that allow researchers to measure age-related biological changes in human cells. We were able to apply this to our experience to determine the extent of sober reprogramming to our new method.

Dr. Diljeet Gill during the experiments. Babraham Institute

Sober indeed, if the regeneration process had succeeded to verify, they examined on the one hand what is called the magnetic clock; other component the transcriptome. The latter corresponds to all the messenger RNA molecules of a cell, replicated from the genes which are in the active state in a cell. Sober boy aside, the pigment clock is the mathematical model that predicts age by measuring sober sober methylation levels of DNA in different gnome websites.

You should know that Low-DNA methylation is a process by which methyl groups are added to a DNA molecule, which can change a gene’s function without changing an underlying DNA sequence. This DNA methylation is essential for healthy cell growth and development and is affected by life setting and environmental factors. Pigtic clocks can therefore be used to estimate the biological age of a tissue, a type of cell or an organ, by comparing the age of DNA methylation (or biological age) with the chronological age, in different tissues. Sober using these two measures, the cell The reprogrammed cells corresponded to the profile of the cells which had 30 years younger by connection to reference datasets.

Effects for regenerative medicine

By done, the analysis showed that the cells had found characteristic markers of sober skin cells, in particular by observing sober production sober collagen in the reprogrammed cells. Fibroblasts produce collagen. This molecule is present in the operating system, skin muscles and structures, and guides tissue structure and wound healing. The researchers did not really find a greater production of collagen by the rejuvenated fibroblasts than by the control cells (which had not undergone the reprogramming process).

left, fibroblasts from a sober elderly person 20 20 years. In the middle, gs fibroblasts have not undergone reprogramming. right, reprogrammed cells. The collagen is shown in red. Gill et al., 2019

In addition, in vivo, fibroblasts ze move into areas that need to be repaired. The researchers then checked this ability in the partially rejuvenated cells. For this purpose, they incised a layer of cells, like a cut in the skin. They discovered that their sony ericsson-like fibroblasts moved faster through space than older cells. The researchers point out that this is a promising sign of the upcoming possibility of creating cells capable of better healing wounds.

Finally, transcriptome analysis, top plus mentioned, found evidence of signs of sober rejuvenation at two particular genes implicated in age-related illnesses and symptoms: the APBA2 gene, associated with Alzheimer’s disease, and the MAF gene, playing a role in the sober development of cataracts. Professor Hair Reik, who is leading the research, says: This work has very interesting effects. Eventually, we may be able to identify genes that rejuvenate without reprogramming, and specifically target those that reduce the effects of aging .

Indeed, even though the mechanism behind transient reprogramming is still not fully understood, scientists believe that specific key areas of the genome involved in the formation of cell identity may be missed. to the rescheduling process. Gill concludes: Our results represent a fantastic step forward in our understanding of cellular reprogramming. We have proven that cells can be rejuvenated without losing their function and that rejuvenation seeks to restore certain functions of old cells. The fact that we also observed a reversal of aging indicators in disease-associated genes is particularly promising for the future of this work.

Supply: eLife