Stem cells are able to create specialized cells such as liver, cutaneous or nervous, a process called differentiation. Now a scientific team has shown that changing their diet these cells can rejuvenate and become an improved and younger version of themselves.
The change of diet “forces them to metabolize their energy in a different way than normal, and that process basically reprogram the stem cells. The net result is that they behave as if they come from an anterior phase of development, which increases their ability to develop, or differentiate, in other types of cells,” summarizes the first author of the Robert Bone study, from the Mother Medicine Center of the Novo Nordisk (Renew).
To modify the diet, the team formed by scientists from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) changed the type of sugar that stem cells have available in the environment in which they grow.
“The really surprising thing is that they not only differ better, but they remain in shape and healthy much better over time compared to stem cells under standard cultivation conditions. And everything with a relatively simple method,” said the corresponding author, Joshua Brickman, Renew professor.
The details of the study have been published this Friday at the Journal Embo.
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Stem cells
The stem cells are fundamental and unique cells of our body, which can be replicated and evolved to become other specialized cell types, such as liver cells, cutaneous or nervous.
Researchers believe that these stem cells, which are grown from an embryo and remain on a plaque where they can become specialized cell types, could serve to develop new treatments in the future that replace or repair damaged tissues and organs or to restore functions that have been lost (regenerative medicine).
In the study, researchers have created a new culture medium for embryonic stem cells (CME) of mouse.
In its method, they replace the sugar of the crop -glucosa- with a different sugar, the galactose. The change of ‘diet’ blocks the normal metabolism of glucose and restricts the energy source of the cells to a metabolic process known as oxidative phosphorylation.
When changing the nutrient source, the CMEs are reprogrammed at an earlier phase of their development, which increases their ability to differentiate in other types of cells.
The researchers discovered that a specific signaling protein known for regulating the aging of the cells was activated by the change in sugar metabolism, which, in turn, made other key proteins be better joined by DNA.
The result of the new metabolic process is that DNA is more densely “packaged”, that makes stem cells better understand what they should do and behave as if they proceed from a previous development phase, paying better as stem cells.
Regenerative medicine and fertility treatments
The authors believe that their research could have different applications.
“Since we now have a simple medium to rejuvenate the cells, we want to investigate how this trick could work in a variety of cell types. For example, could we use this diet to revitalize liver or cardiac cells and use them to treat patients with congestive heart failure or liver cirrhosis?” Brickman said.
“Maybe we could use this trick to regenerate aging cells and treat Parkinson’s Parkinson, osteoporosis or diabetes,” he speculated.
For authors, an interesting area to use these ‘mother supercells’ is in the treatment of fertility, specifically fertilization in vitro (IVF), since the ‘mother supercells’ are good to produce certain types of tissue that is formed during the embryonic development early and that is important for the success of IVF treatment.
“One of the things that the ‘mother supercells’ seem to manufacture better is a cell lineage that becomes something called Vitelino Saco” that is very important for embryos to be implanted and converted into pregnancies successfully, said Robert Bone.
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The doubts of the work
For Ángel Raya Chamorro, coordinator of the Regenerative Medicine Program of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and Professor of Physiology of the Spanish University of Barcelona, the study is “very well done” but consider extrapolating it to human treatments in regenerative medicine or fertilization in vitro “It is a bit overvalued. It can be real but it needs to be demonstrated,” SMC Spain clarified on the scientific dissemination platform.
For that, Raya Chamorro said, it should be tried in humans: “They do a very small test with mouse embryos and I do not know why they have not also tried it with human embryos, if that type of experiment is technically very simple and the relevance of the work would have increased.”
As for the implications for aging, the scientist believes that it is “absolutely speculative.”
With EFE information
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