Chinese scientists may have found ‘vampire’ secret allowing old mice to live longer using young blood
- Author says previous studies detail rejuvenation process but not the essential mechanisms that explain how young blood triggers a response in aged cells
- Chinese Academy of Sciences team is latest in decades-old journey to find key to rejuvenation, with entrepreneurs joining in the pursuit of longevity
A group of Chinese researchers has discovered a “vampire” technique, involving taking young blood and injecting it into older mice to make them live longer.
A new study, led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that exposure to old blood could accelerate the ageing of various organs and cell types in young mice, and that injecting young blood into old mice could “rejuvenate” their adult stem cells and surrounding somatic cells.
They further identified that haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) – the stem cells that give rise to other blood and immune cells – are among the cells most sensitive to young blood.
02:04
Gene therapy which could slow human ageing found by Chinese researchers in studies on mice
“Most of the previous relevant studies have only demonstrated the [rejuvenation] phenomena and have not revealed enough about the essential mechanisms,” Ma Shuai, lead author of the study, told the state-run Science and Technology Daily.
The study aimed to find scientific evidence and answer the question of how young blood triggered a response in the aged cells, said Ma, who is also a researcher with the Institute of Zoology and the Beijing Institute of Genomics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Stem Cell last Tuesday.
Scientists have shown interest in the anti-ageing properties of young blood since at least the late 1950s when the first research on the subject was published, and have shown increasing interest in the subject since the early 2000s.