Stem Cell Transplantation to Treat Chronic Inflammation and Frailty

Today's open access commentary is a good companion piece to a recent paper covering the use of mesenchymal stem cell therapies to suppress age-related chronic inflammation. These first generation stem cell therapies have proven to be unreliable when it comes to the original goal of regeneration of organ function, but they do reliably reduce excessive inflammation for some months. Transplanted stem cells near all fail to survive and engraft. Some clinics report better results than others on this front, but there is little understanding at present as to why similar cells sources and methodologies can produce wildly different outcomes in different hands. Benefits in most cases arise due to transient signaling by the transplanted cells that changes the behavior of native cells for some time. The chronic inflammation of aging and physical frailty go hand in hand. Inflammation is disruptive of normal tissue maintenance, both of muscle tissue and in vital organs. Controlling inflammation can produce patient benefits. A great many clinical trials, including those aiming to treat age-related frailty, have been based on this approach of targeting regulatory mechanisms of inflammation. Still, first generation mesenchymal stem cell therapies are not yet as widely used as they might be, most likely due to the continued issues with consistency of outcomes from clinic to clinic and patient to patient. Much remains to be explored regarding the reasons why this variability exists. ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs