In a study published in the journal eLife on April 8, scientists in the United Kingdom “de-aged” the skin cells of a 53-year-old woman by 30 years. Before you get too excited, they performed this miracle in a petri dish.
The scientists looked at age-related changes in DNA as opposed to looking at skin on a human being and found that the genetically modified cells appeared and behaved like 23-year-old skin cells. The process to de-age the skin cells took less than two weeks.The techniques were actually not new and have been utilized in other ways for decades. Usually, however, the process takes far longer and the researchers were able to avoid problems that reprogrammed cells often have, such as becoming cancerous.
“This kind of work is very important,” Dr. Ivona Percec, a plastic surgeon and stem cell researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, told The Daily Beast. “And it’s one that’s been sought out by many scientists in order to reverse or delay aging.”
Rejuvenation or regeneration research utilizes human stem cells, which have the unique ability to develop into any other type of cell. Stem cells can serve as an internal repair system in the body. However, they are often rejected when attempted to use in real-time therapies.
Scientists have been looking for ways to circumvent these types of hurdles by creating their own lab-grown stem cells. Researchers from the United Kingdom study utilized a chemical solution with their own lab-grown stem cells that help reshape the cell’s DNA. They ran the “bath” for less than two weeks rather than the typical 50 days.
“I remember the day I got the results back and I didn’t quite believe that some of the cells were 30 years younger than they were supposed to be,” Dilgeet Gill, a biomedical researcher at Babraham Institute and lead author of the study, told the BBC. “It was a very exciting day!”
The petrie dish experiment is exciting, although don’t expect the new skin treatment to come to you anytime soon. But the research may eventually lead to new therapies that could potentially refresh your skin or restore a failing organ.
Read the full article at The Daily Beast
