To What Degree is Chronic Inflammation the Cause of Thymic Involution with Age?

The thymus is vital to the function of the adaptive immune system. It is where T cells mature after their creation as thymocytes in the bone marrow, acquiring the necessary tolerance and function to venture forth into the body and defend it against pathogens, cancerous cells, and senescent cells. Unfortunately the thymus declines in size with age, its active tissue replaced with fat, in a process known as thymic involution. The consequence of this is an ever smaller supply of new T cells, ready to tackle threats. The adaptive immune system becomes ever less functional as a result, its limited set of cells uselessly specialized to threats such as cytomegalovirus, and otherwise ever more damaged and dysfunctional, lacking replacements. A broad spectrum of efforts in the research community are focused on reversing the loss of thymus tissue with age. Even just considering companies actively involved in development: Lygenesis is building thymus organoids to insert into patient lymph nodes; Intervene Immune is trying human trials with a mix of hormones that have had some effect in animal studies; and Repair Biotechnologies, founded by Bill Cherman and I, is working on FOXN1 upregulation via gene therapy. Looking back into the research community, there have been past efforts with recombinant KGF, which unfortunately doesn't seem to work in humans, interest in upregulation of BMP4, and more. Which mechanisms are most important in the age-related portion of thymic involu...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs