Exosomes From Stem Cells Might Be A Big Piece In The Fight Against Aging

A narrow population of hypothalamic stem cell are directly fighting aging of the murine body via mechanisms involving exosomes, the brain and aging, according to hypotheses from researchers at the lab of Dongcheng Cai, as published in Nature International Journal Of Science.

The study into the hypotheses takes away those key stem cells to investigate what happens, and argues that via thymidine kinase-based ablation of these hypothalamic stem cells they are required in the brain to maintain bodily functions; adding these brain stems cells are necessary for other things as the hypothalamic stem cell ablated “model mice displayed accelerated muscle endurance decline, decreases in coordination, treadmill performance, sociality and novel object recognition.” Changes were in magnitude of great enough significance for the authors to document their discovery, such as they observed mice lacking in these brain stem cells died at a much younger age than controls, model mice were developed in which hypothalamic stem/progenitor cells that co-expressed Sox2 and Bmi1 are abalted; additional experiments were repeated using diphtheria toxin as well which was only injected into a specific brain region. There was evidence of Sox2 genes being expressed in the brain and elsewhere such as the skin.

Other types of brain neurons were investigated but did not show effects in the ablation system. Stem cells used for transplants were modified IKBa-htNSCs which have supercharged ability to engraft “to determine whether inhibition of the inflammatory response in these cells may help to overcome the survival problem”, “htNSCS derived from newborn mice were used which stable expressed dominant negative IkBa and GFP, previously it was shown these cells are resilient to NF-KB-mediated inflammation compared to control htNSCS stably expressing GFP”.  Aging retardation and lifespan extension were achieved in older mice implanted with healthy hypothalamic stem cell/progenitor cells engineered to survive from aging related hypothalamic inflammatory microenvironment.

Mechanisms of the anti-aging effect of the hypothalamic neural stem/progenitor cell could be attributed to exosomes, particularly exosomal microRNAS within cerebrospinal fluid which decline during ageing whereas central treatment with healthy cells secreted exosomes led to slowing of ageing, according to the authors who found infusion of these exosomes alone into model mice brains had significant effects on a variety of aspects of the nervous system function, locomotion and more. Authors concluded that ageing speed is substantially controlled by hypothalamic stem cells in part via release of exosomal miRNAs.

“A sentinel paper outlining the importance of the trophic mediators of stem cells. Exosomes are well known for their pro growth and immuno modulatory capabilities. Measuring only 40 to 100 nm , they can effortlessly traverse the blood brain barrier. Previous papers have shown their abilities to modulate the entire milieu of the body for up to a year after intravenous administration. By fighting widespread inflammation, exosomes may be today's fountain of youth. Shhhhh don't tell Peter Thiel,” said Dr. Doug, Spiel, MD, Medical Director of Kimera Labs https://kimeralabs.com/ .