Age Diminishing as a Barrier in Regenerative Medicine

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Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine: building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

Over the last few years there have been a series of positive developments in stem cell research that suggest the age of a patient will not be a significant hurdle in generating useful cells for therapeutic use. Here is another: "Researchers were able to successfully transform cells from patients as old as 100 into stem cells virtually identical to those found in embryos. If these can be used to grow healthy tissue which can safely be transplanted into elderly patients it could open up new avenues of treatment for the elderly. ... This is a new paradigm for cell rejuvenation ... the age of cells is definitely not a barrier to reprogramming. ... scientists can use a method of taking normal cells from adults and reversing them to an unspecialised state, known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), making them almost indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells. But experts are divided over whether the technique can work efficiently in elderly patients, who have the most to gain from the potential treatments, because their cells have deteriorated further. By adding two new ingredients, known as transcription factors, to the method of generating adult stem cells, they were able to overcome this hurdle and 'reset' many of the key markers of ageing in cells."

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8861115/Stem-cell-hope-for-elderly-patients.html