(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A recent study on mice shows stem cells may be
able to stop the effects of aging on muscles, which could prevent conditions
like muscle atrophy and Parkinson’s disease.
Adult stem cells in muscles have a receptor called Notch that, when
activated, tells them to grow and divide. As the body ages, this receptor’s
activity is inhibited by the activity of another receptor for the protein
TGF-beta. These two pathways -- one an aging pathway, one a youthful pathway
-- compete for control of stem cell growth and division.
“As we age, our stem cells are prevented, through chemical signals, from
doing their jobs,” lead researcher Irina Conboy, Ph.D., an assistant
professor of bioengineering and an investigator at the Berkeley Stem Cell
Center and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, was quoted
as saying.
In a study at the University of California, Berkeley, researchers disabled
the aging pathway on a group of old mice and compared their muscle healing
process with that of young mice and a control group. They found muscles in
the “treated” old mice healed similarly to the young mice, and their levels
of cellular regeneration were three to four times greater than those of the
control group.
“When we are young, there is an optimal balance between Notch and TGF-beta,”
Dr. Conboy said. “We need to find out what the levels of these chemicals are
in the young so we can calibrate the system when we’re older. If we can do
that, we could rejuvenate tissue repair for a very long time.”
SOURCE: Nature; published online June 15, 2008
