Researchers here report that transplanting bone marrow from young donor mice into old recipient mice produces a range of benefits, such as improvement in the behavior of macrophage cells. Bone marrow stem cells are responsible for producing blood and immune cells, among other important populations, and this capability is degraded in a number of ways with age. Introducing younger stem cells and their supporting structures is a plausible means to at least partially reverse this process. That said, this sort of approach is unlikely to arrive in human medicine in exactly the same form, given the challenges involved in bone marrow transplantation. It is not a procedure one would want to undergo unless there were no other options, and deploying it widely as a preventative…
Transplantation of Young Bone Marrow into Old Mice Produces Systemic Benefits
Researchers here report that transplanting bone marrow from young donor mice into old recipient mice produces a range of benefits, such as improvement in the behavior of macrophage cells. Bone marrow stem cells are responsible for producing blood and immune cells, among other important populations, and this capability is degraded in a number of ways with age. Introducing younger stem cells and their supporting structures is a plausible means to at least partially reverse this process. That said, this sort of approach is unlikely to arrive in human medicine in exactly the same form, given the challenges involved in bone marrow transplantation. It is not a procedure one would want to undergo unless there were no other options, and deploying it widely as a preventative…