Growing a New Thymus From Engineered Cells

The thymus is vital to generation of new immune cells, and the fact that it atrophies early in life, turning a river of new cells into a trickle, is one of the factors placing an effective cap on the adult immune cell population. In part because of this limit in later life competent immune cells capable of dealing with new threats are crowded out by other immune cell types. Solutions to this issue include restoration of a larger supply of new cells by restoring the thymus or targeted destruction of the excess cells to free up space and spur the body to generate replacement immune cells that are capable of doing their jobs. Earlier this year researchers published a demonstration of a short cut to rejuvenate the aged thymus simply by manipulating levels of FOXN1 to boost the population of certain important progenitor cells responsible for maintaining the thymus. It is rare to find such short cuts in tissue engineering, and this one most likely only exists for the thymus because of its unusual early decline in adults - a course very different from most organs, and which may have a comparatively simple set of triggers. Here the same research group shows off the next stage in their work, which is the generation of a complete new thymus in vivo by much the same set of mechanisms: [Scientists] started with cells from a mouse embryo. These cells were genetically "reprogrammed" and started to transform into a type of cell found in the thymus. These were mixed with other support-role...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs