Researchers in the U.K. have developed a way to reverse the aging process in skin cells.
In the last decade, researchers have been able to reprogram multiple mouse, rat and human cell types. Cells have been de-aged for so long that they still retain their specific type and function.
The method was published in the journal eLife on April 8 and has been dubbed "maturation phase Transient Reprogramming".
The fibroblasts from the three middle-aged donors were compared to the cells from the younger donors. The middle-aged cells were similar to the younger cells in many ways. The team noticed that the technique had affected genes related to age related diseases.
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Gill and his colleagues looked at the behavior of fibroblasts to see if they could act like younger skin cells. When they wounded a layer of the cells, they found that the rejuvenated cells quickly filled the gap.
This is not the first study to de-age skin cells. Yamanaka won the prize in 2006 for genetically reprogrammed mouse skin cells and turned them into iPSCs. These iPSCs have the potential to form any cell type in the body, and resemble cells in early development.
What are stem cells?
There are differences between the new research and Yamanaka's method. Yamanaka's method takes 50 days to reprogram cells to an embryo. Gill's method takes 13 days and only partially reprograms cells so that they retain their identity.
Stem cells are great for research, but the complete process of reprogrammed cells is not ideal for medicine. Completely reprogrammed cells lose their identities. These cells can become cancer when implanted into the body.
Gill's research shows that partially reprogrammed cells, like the skin cells, become biologically younger and retain specialized cell functions, though they could still potentially pose a risk of cancer.
Gill and his colleagues acknowledge that their paper is a proof-of-concept study. The authors don't know how fibroblasts from younger or older individuals would react to the new method, or if cells from people of different ages would always de-age by 30 years.
Gill's technique is still based on Yamanaka's method. It is not known how reprogrammed cells might behave inside a living organisms or what risks they pose.
The technique will never be used in a clinical setting as it is currently a type of gene therapy, according to Ben Van Handel, a stem cell biologist and co- founder of the skin care company Heraux.
Handel told Live Science that the research is valuable and that the way in which it was done will not be applicable in the real world.
The study's long-term implications are very exciting, according to study lead author Dr. Wolf Reik.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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