Science, Aging | featured news

For some, wrinkles are seen as a sign of character. For most, they are an unwelcome reminder of ageing. However, scientists are developing a method that may finally end the need for the routine of treatments and moisturisers used to try to keep facial lines at bay.

Scientists may one day slow down aging with a simple injection of youthful stem cells. They’ve just proven this can be done in mice, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications. The mice, which had been engineered to mimic a human disease called progeria, would normally have grown old when they were quite young. But that changed when researchers injected muscle stem cells from healthy young mice into the bellies of the quickly aging mice. Within days, the doddering and frail mice began to act like they were living the storyline of “The Strange Case of Benjamin Button” as they started looking and acting younger.

A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to "cure" aging -- banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.

Scientists may have found the root cause of what makes hair go gray. For the first time, researchers have identified the signaling protein that coordinates the process between hair follicle stem cells, which produce hair, and color-supplying stem cells, or melanocytes.

In a surprise result that can help in the understanding of both aging and cancer, researchers working with an engineered type of stem cell said they reversed the aging process in a rare genetic disease.

Scientists have zeroed in on one apparent key to long life: an inherited cellular repair mechanism that thwarts aging and perhaps helps prevent disease. Researches say the finding could lead to anti-aging drugs.

Mutations have been found to extend the lifespan of animals in the lab such as worms, fruit flies and mice, and appear to play the same role in humans. Professor Linda Partridge, director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London, said such research could help treat or delay many diseases simultaneously with medication.