A new method could turn back the clock by lengthening human telomeres, which are the protective "caps" on the ends of chromosomes linked to aging.
The research team found treated cells behaved as if they were much younger and tended to multiply instead of dying off, Stanford University Medical Center reported. The new process employs a type of modified RNA that could potentially be used to fight disease.
"Now we have found a way to lengthen human telomeres by as much as 1,000 nucleotides, turning back the internal clock in these cells by the equivalent of many years of human life," said Helen Blau, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford and director of the university's Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology. "This greatly increases the number of cells available for studies such as drug testing or disease modeling."
The technique required as few as three of the modified RNA over the course of a few days in order to significantly increase the length of the telomeres in a lab culture. The skin cells looked at in the study 28 more times than untreated ones, and the muscle cells divided at a rate three times higher.
"This new approach paves the way toward preventing or treating diseases of aging," said Blau. "There are also highly debilitating genetic diseases associated with telomere shortening that could benefit from such a potential treatment."
The findings could help scientists gain insight into how cells function (or don't) when new muscles are made and could help explain why growing these cells is so difficult in the lab.
"One day it may be possible to target muscle stem cells in a patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for example, to extend their telomeres. There are also implications for treating conditions of aging, such as diabetes and heart disease. This has really opened the doors to consider all types of potential uses of this therapy," Blau said.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the FASEB Journal.
