April 03 2008 / by AlFin
Category: Health & Medicine Year: General Rating: 8
Aging brains lose much of the ability to make new nerves and
learn new information, since they lose most of the ability to
maintain their stem cell supply, with aging. It may be possible to
reverse that decline, and rejuvenate an aging brain’s flagging
ability to repair itself and learn new things, by introducing cells
from cord blood into the person’s peripheral veins.
US researchers in Florida have demonstrated, using aged mice,
that a single injection of human umbilical cord blood mononuclear
cells (HUCBMCs) can rejuvenate a mouse’s hippocampus and supply of
neural stem cell progenitors. The aged mouse brains also began
producing new nerves.
(cont.)
Published in Biomedcentral,
the Florida research opens the door to clinical trials in
humans.
The present study did not attempt to determine if decreasing
senescence of the neural stem cells could reverse the cognitive
decline with age. There is still much debate surrounding the role
of neurogenesis in learning and memory [44-49] and whether cellular
senescence of the stem cell pool with age leads to an aging
phenotype. While not a goal of the current study, it will be
important to determine if the rejuvenation of the aged
stem/progenitor cell pool can reverse the age-related cognitive
decline.
If this study can be replicated with similar results in human
beings, new regenerative therapies for degenerative brain diseases
of aging will be within reach.
The most surprising and promising aspect of this research is
that the cord blood cells were introduced into the peripheral
veins, rather than into the brain directly. This relatively
non-invasive therapy should be fairly safe and inexpensive, if it
ultimately proves effective. That should eventually make such
therapies widely available to most people of the world with access
to medical facilities.
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