A team in the Babraham Institute in Cambridge has successfully rejuvenated a 53-year-old woman’s skin cells to look and behave like a 23-year-old’s, the research centre announced on Thursday.
The team had initially set out to create embryonic stem cells, which can divide into any type of cell in the body, using adult cells. Nobel Award winner Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan, first turned “normal” cells that have a specific function into stem cells back in 2006.
The BBC reported that German molecular biologist Wolf Reik, postdoctoral student Diljeet Gill, and a team at Babraham Institute built upon Yamanaka’s work. Yamanaka grew stem cells by exposing adult cells to four molecules for about 50 days – a unique method he named iPS.
Reik and Gill’s team exposed skin cells to the same molecules for only 13 days, then let them grow under natural conditions.
By studying collagen production in the cells, the researchers found age-related changes on skin cells were removed and they temporarily lost their identity. After growing under normal conditions for a period of time, researchers found the cells began behaving like skin cells again.
The team then measured age-related biological changes in the reprogrammed cells, and found the cells matched the profile of those 30 years younger to reference data sets, Gill said in a release.
“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,” Gill told the BBC. “It was a very exciting day.”
The research was done in a lab, and Reik told the BBC the team cannot take the technique to a clinic because the technique used to rejuvenate the cells has the potential to increase the risk of cancer, likely due to creating lasting genetic changes within cells.
But the biologist said the method of rejuvenating cells could help speed up healing time in burn victims, and may eventually extend human life.
“Eventually, we may be able to identify genes that rejuvenate without reprogramming, and specifically target those to reduce the effects of ageing,” Reik said in a press release.
The researchers published their findings in the journal eLife on April 8.
