Reporting on Rejuvenation Biotechnology 2015: Thymus Regeneration and Thoughts on Research Strategy

To go along with a few posts from last week, here is a longer report from this year's Rejuvenation Biotechnology conference, hosted by the SENS Research Foundation. There are some interesting tidbits in the section on thymus regeneration, which is an approach to immune system rejuvenation that promises to be very helpful, even if not capable of solving all of the problems of the aging immune system in and of itself. A sizable component of the frailty of aging arises because the immune system becomes dysregulated and incompetent, its complement of cells capable of destroying pathogens reduced to very low levels, replaced by other types of immune cell that do little to help in this situation. Regeneration of the thymus is one of a number of possible ways to introduce much larger numbers of fresh new immune cells into an old body, thereby patching this problem to at least an initial degree: Report from Rejuvenation Biotech 2015 Georg Hollander presented a cogent and enlightening exegesis of the thymus, from basic function to ongoing projects. The thymus is a small gland under the breastbone that is responsible for a crucial function of the immune system: training white blood cells (T-cells) to distinguish between self and other, so they can consistently attack the latter and spare the former. In adulthood, the thymus atrophies ("thymic involution"), and in old age there is almost no thymus left, with the disastrous result that T-cells not only fail to protect our bodies from i...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs