What is immune rejuvenation? How would that work and what would be the benefits?
As we age, our immune systems can change in unhelpful and unhealthy ways. One such change is a drift in the balance of production of different kinds of immune cells. Such a shift can lead to too many of some immune cells and too few of others. This in turn may lead to undesired physiological outcomes such as inflammation and potentially weaker immune responses.
Aging immune systems can also undergo clonal expansion or selection where progeny of a single stem or precursor cell become overrepresented. In some cases this phenomenon may be a precursor to blood cancer development.
A similar process can happen in aging skin where surprisingly large areas of skin are clonal or near-clonal.
Immune rejuvenation may restore balance and a more youthful, healthy state to immune systems. Many stem cell supplements are sold including some that claim to achieve such rejuvenation. I don’t believe that any particular supplement is likely to work here. However, other more intense procedures might do it.
Let’s start there with the weekly review.
Immune rejuvenation & other reads
- Depleting myeloid-biased haematopoietic stem cells rejuvenates aged immunity, Nature. This is from Irv Weissman and his team. Ablating myeloid-fated HSCs restores balance to the immune system and shifts to greater production of lymphocytes. It also sparked signs of “decreasing age-related markers of immune decline” more generally. While this is mouse work, it is very exciting work and could have implications for humans.
- Cryo-Cell Announces Plans to Explore Strategic Alternatives and Spin-off Celle Corp. to Maximize Shareholder Value, Seeking Alpha. It’s not clear what this spin-off news means for Cryo-Cell. Investors seem to love the news so far, running up the stock (CCEL). The new firm Celle will own the controversial Duke deal component. I’m not a fan of the Duke Cryo-Cell deal because its core plan is to open up pay-for-play infusion clinics for kids with neurological conditions using unproven cord cells. That doesn’t seem right to me unless they get far more data showing clear signs of efficacy. So far the data have been discouraging such as showing no benefit for autism.
- Direct programming of human pluripotent stem cells into endothelial progenitors with SOX17 and FGF2, Stem Cell Reports.
- Chuck Murry is moving to lead the USC stem cell program. Chuck is one of the truly amazing people out there, a great scientist and person. He will be moving on from being the leader of the UW stem cell program.
- Utah flouts FDA with law greenlighting placental stem cell therapies, Science. This article has more on the backstory behind the new Utah stem cell law that conflicts with FDA regs.
Stem cell patches
Pre-clinical evaluation of the efficacy and safety of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte patch, Stem Cell Res & Ther. I’ve written before about various kinds of stem cell patches including some very different ones from those used to fix damaged tissues directly.
great article….i really enjoyed