Rejuvenation of woman's skin could tackle diseases of aging

Image source, Fátima Santos

The skin cells of a 53-year-old woman are the same as those of a 23 year-old.

The scientists in Cambridge think they can do the same thing with other tissues.

The aim is to develop treatments for age related diseases.

The techniques used to create Dolly the sheep more than 25 years ago are the basis of the technology.

The head of the team, Prof Wolf Reik, of the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, hoped that the technique could eventually be used to keep people healthier as they grow older.

We have been imagining this kind of thing. Many common diseases get worse with age and to think about helping people in this way is exciting.

Prof Reich said that the work was at a very early stage. There were several scientific issues that needed to be overcome before it could move out of his lab and into the clinic. For the first time, he said that cell rejuvenation is possible.

A method of turning an adult skin cell from a sheep into an embryo was developed in the 1990s. Dolly the cloned sheep was created.

The aim of the team was not to create clones of sheep or humans, but to use the technique to create human embryonic stem cells. They hoped that they could be grown into specific tissues to replace worn out body parts.

Prof Yamanaka made the Dolly technique simpler in 2006 at Kyoto University. Adding chemicals to adult cells for 50 days is the new method. The adult cells were turned into stem cells.

Stem cells created in Dolly need to be regrown into the cells and tissues the patient requires. Despite decades of effort, the use of stem cells to treat diseases is very limited.

Prof Reik and his team used theIPS technique on old skin cells. The bath was cut short from 50 days to 12. Dr Dilgeet Gill was astonished to find that the cells had not turned into embryonic stem cells, but had rejuvenated into skin cells that looked and behaved as if they came from a young person.

He said that he didn't believe that some of the cells were 30 years younger than they were supposed to be when he got the results back. It was an exciting day.

The method can't be immediately translated to the clinic because it increases the risk of cancer. Prof Reik was confident that his team could find an alternative method after learning that it was possible to rejuvenation cells.

The long-term aim is to extend the human health span, rather than the lifespan, so that people can get older in a healthier way.

Prof Reik believes that rejuvenation of skin in parts of the body where it has been cut or burned could be a way to speed up healing. The researchers showed that rejuvenated skin cells move more quickly in simulations of a wound.

Image source, Science Photo Library

The next step is to see if the technology will work on other tissues.

The long-stalled clinical benefits of the technology may not be that far away, according to Prof Melanie Welham, who is the executive chairman of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

It might be possible to boost people's response to vaccinations as well as their ability to fight infections in the future if similar approaches or new therapies could rejuvenation immune cells, which we know become less responsive as we age.

The big question is whether research efforts in this area would lead to a method of whole-body regeneration, an elixir of youth or an anti-aging pill. Prof Reik said that this idea was not out of the ordinary.

There are some signs of rejuvenation after the technique has been applied to genetically modified mice. One study showed signs of a rejuvenated pancreas, which is interesting for its potential to tackle diabetes.

The scientific hurdles between Prof Reik's result in the lab and the simplest clinical applications are considerable. He doesn't think it will be a big deal to translate the rejuvenation process to other types of tissue.

If you find other chemicals that do the same thing, that would be good, but they may be just as bad. It is ambitious to think that you will be able to find these chemicals easily and that they will be safer.

It is possible that other types of cells would require different conditions. It would be a long way off if you could do it safely with the whole body.