Source: The New York Times
The British journal Nature recently published a new research result: the International Research Team composed of 21 scientists such as the School of Neurosciences of Stanford University in the United States and the University of London in the United Kingdom used the Fgf17 factor, a key target in the cerebrospinal fluid, to inject the brain marrow fluid of young mice into the brains of elderly mice, improve the memory of elderly mice, and achieve memory improvement.
The research team demonstrated that cerebrospinal fluid in young mice has potential regenerative properties for aging brains.
Maria et al., a psychobiologist at Boston Children's Hospital in the United States, commented on the comparison, saying: "The above research has made breakthroughs in the field of brain health and aging, achieving improvement in memory, and drug research beneficial to diseases such as Alzheimer's disease." "From the perspective of basic science, this is a relatively effective research result, but it is also expected to be applied to the clinic."
As early as 2014, Professor Wyss-Coray led a team to conduct a study: also in the experiment of small mice, after the young plasma was injected into the body of the old mouse, the brain of the old mouse became younger. In the following years, Professor Wyss-coray began research on brain aging and continued to explain why young blood can reverse brain aging through this research. In this experiment, Wyss-coray said: "The plasma of young mice who love to move contains a lot of plasma proteins that are closely related to brain aging, and the transplantation can protect the memory from being lost." ”
Although the transfusion of cerebrospinal fluid from young mice into the brains of older mice is a new study, there are still significant risks. First of all, the paper mentions that after transplantation, at least two mice have died, which means that the experiment is repulsive; secondly, the paper does not mention human clinical trials, and small mice can not replace people, so people may not necessarily be suitable for exchanging cerebrospinal fluid, and more experiments are needed to prove it.
The paper sparked a stir among medical scientists, and when it was published in the May 11 issue of the journal Nature, many scientists had different views on the study. Scientists warn that the study's findings will not be applied to the clinic anytime soon. The difficulty is that we don't understand the anti-aging factors in cerebrospinal fluid.
reference:
[1] Hanadie Yousef et al., (2019) Aged blood impairs hippocampal neural precursor activity and activates microglia via brain endothelial cell VCAM1. Nature Medicine. Doi: 10.1038/s41591-019-0440-4
[2] Paper Alert: VCAM1 Opens the Door to Brain Aging. Retrieved May 27, 2019, from https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/paper-alert-vcam1-opens-door-brain-aging