Mesenchymal Stem Cell Derived Extracellular Vesicles Slow the Accelerated Aging of Progeroid Mice

Researchers here show that, in a progeroid mouse model that exhibits high levels of cellular senescence and accelerated manifestations of aging, delivering extracellular vesicles harvested from mesenchymal stem cells has much the same effect as delivering the cells as a therapy. This illustrates the point that many of these first generation approaches to stem cell therapy produce benefits via a brief period of signaling of the transplanted cells. The cells themselves die quite quickly and near entirely fail to integrate into patient tissue. Extracellular vesicles are more easily produced, stored, quality controlled, and used, overall a much better prospect from a logistical point of view. This is why there is presently such a focus on the development of therapies based on this approach. A characteristic of aging is the loss of regenerative capacity, which leads to an impaired ability to respond to stress and therefore increased morbidity and mortality. This has led to the hypothesis that aging is partly driven by the loss of functional adult stem cells necessary for maintenance of tissue homeostasis. Indeed, mice greater than two years of age have a significant reduction in the number and proliferative capacity of various types of adult stem cells. We previously demonstrated that muscle-derived stem/progenitor cells (MDSPC) are adversely affected upon aging. MDSPCs isolated from old and Ercc1-/∆ progeroid mice have reduced proliferative capacity and impaired...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs