The article, which can be found by clicking on Turn back the clock on aging muscles, is about a new adult stem cell treatment that can help restore strength to damaged skeletal muscles in the elderly. It’s not exactly the elusive “Fountain of Youth” but it’s not far from it – this new method can restore muscle function and strength to the elderly actually matching a young, healthy state.

With the ever increasing population of elderly worldwide, loss of skeletal muscle function and strength has become a significant chronic condition. It is estimated that people lose 15% of muscle mass each year after the age of 75, and up until now that loss has been irreversible and often devastating. Skeletal muscles support basic functions such as sitting, standing, blinking, and swallowing. The loss of muscle function is not easy to deal with – and many of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Co-author of the study Assistant Professor Penney Gilbert at University of Toronto notes that during aging some stem cells experience a protein modification that impedes the growth of new stem cells. According to Gilbert, “The new method allowed the aged cells to grow and make more copies of themselves.” By transplanting these rejuvenated stem cells into injured or aged muscles tissue, they were able to return strength to levels on par with young, healthy tissue.

The new study supports what we at RSCI have been saying for years about the regenerative and restorative power of adult stem cells.” Perhaps most important is that the new stem cell treatment also has the potential to significantly shorten and improve recovery from hip replacement surgery for the elderly.



Some of the muscles affected by hip replacement surgery which can be treated with adult stem cells.

POSTED BY "Willie"

Researchers have created an adult stem cell based method for restoring strength to damaged skeletal muscles in the elderly. 

Skeletal muscles are some of the most important muscles in the body, supporting functions such as sitting, standing, blinking and swallowing. In aging individuals, the function of these muscles significantly decreases.   People lose fifteen percent of muscle mass every single year after the age of 75, a trend that is irreversible.

Through tracing the signaling pathways of the cells, the researchers determined that during aging, a subpopulation of stem cells begin to express a modification of a protein that inhibits their ability to grow and make new stem cells.

"But if we instead treated those cells outside the body with a drug that prevented that protein modification from occurring, in combination with culturing the cells on something soft that is reminiscent of soft skeletal tissue, like a hydrogel biomaterial, the combination allowed the aged cells to grow and make more copies of themselves," says co-author and University of Toronto assistant professor Penney Gilbert. 

The rejuvenated cell cultures were then transplanted into injured and aged tissues, with remarkable results: the transplanted cells returned strength to the damaged and aged tissues to levels matching a young, healthy state.


University of Toronto Assistant Professor Penney Gilbert. Photo: E. Vollick

Rather than trying to 'turn back the clock' on dysfunctional stem cells in the aged population, it stimulates stem cells from old muscle tissues that are still functional - to begin dividing and self-renewing.

One of the significant challenges to elderly individuals who receive hip transplants, for instance, is the challenge of repairing skeletal muscles around the hip joint injured during surgery. The study points to the potential for future post-surgery therapies that could leave elderly hip replacement patients spry in a fraction of the time.

"It's a really new, exciting field," says Gilbert, who argues that the muscle stem cell field, which only began to isolate muscle stem cells for study within the last five years, is especially "wide open" in Toronto where "there are really impassioned clinician researchers who are interested in restoring strength in aging and disease.

POSTED by "Anne"

....is not easy to find.  Why?  Because Big Medicine controls almost all the news outlets with their billion-dollar-a-month advertising budget. So all YOU are allowed to read, hear and view on TV is stem cell propaganda, and never anything truthful about Adult Stem Cells---the only stem cells which work, no matter what you hear from fully bribed, fully-controlled researchers who are literally paid hundreds of millions to lie to you.  Why do 80% of MDs tell their patients who ask, that stem cells cause cancer, don't last that long, or are available only from scamming hucksters.  The answer is simple:  MONEY!  "Keep coming to my office, pay me nice fees, let me earn commissions on the useless drugs I prescribe, let me keep making "referral fees" every time I suggest a special treatment or surgery, and most of all, keep getting worse and worse, as you have been since you started being treated for your chronic condition.

Stem cell enhancement really is a new and exciting field of study in the biogenics industry. Compared to embryonic stem cell enhancement, adult stem cell therapy is not questionable . . . Because stem cell enhancement is just not debatable, we're going to simply just concentrate on this particular replacement. Until recently, it had been deemed this was unimportant subject considering that the recognized belief was in fact these particular cells would simply just correct similar parts of your body at their extraction point. It wasn't until very recently that we didn't understand the fact that stem cells can transform to virtually any cell. The theory adult stem cells can primary repair like damaged tissues is now no longer valid. Most recent breakthroughs clearly show any stem cells which are removed from red bone marrow are capable of repairing and also becoming "any" cell precisely where they happen to be needed.

From the day you are born, your mesenchymal (adult adult stem cells within your medulla ossium actually starts to decrease. Your bone marrow to stem cells is around 1 to 10,000 as a child goes to 1 to 2,000,000 when you die. Nonetheless, we now know, this doesn't need to be what has to happen. Minimize the effects of the aging clock by raising your current stem cell ranges.

It turns out that the editors at Nature, the British journal where Obokata’s work was published, couldn’t believe it either. When she and her colleagues submitted the work for publication in 2012, it was rejected. She went away, worked on more experiments and resubmitted. This time, after yet more extensive checks, the journal accepted the paper. And the scientific — and general — media deluge began.

So it’s a fascinating time — and fantastic to see women pioneering this research. However, Japan’s media still has a long way to go regarding its portrayal of women. After all, a piece in the Yomiuri Shimbun soon after Obokata’s paper was published ended with the cheesy observation that “she always strives to be fashionable as well.”

Final Note:  RSCI applauds this amazing young woman and hopes that she succeeds in proving the validity of her work over time.  However, RSCI also knows that given the structure of all medical systems in the entire developed world, there is no chance of anyone being treated with this method (outside clinical trials) before 2030.