Advance in Understanding Aging

[TECH NEWS]

The current pace of population aging is without parallel in human history but surprisingly little is known about the human aging process, because lifespans of eight decades or more make it difficult to study. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies replicated premature aging in the lab, allowing them to study aging-related disease in a dish. In the February 23, 2011 advance online edition of the journal Nature, Juan-Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, Ph.D. a professor in the Salk Institute’s Gene Expression Laboratory, and his team report that they successfully generated “induced pluripotent stem” (iPS) cells from skin cells obtained from patients with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria—who age eight to ten times faster than the rest of us—and differentiated them into smooth muscle cells displaying the telltale signs of vascular aging. “The slow progression and complexity of the aging process makes it very hard to study the pathogenesis of cardiovascular and other aging-related disorders,” says Izpisúa Belmonte. “Having a human model of accelerated aging may give us new insights into how we age. It may also help prevent or treat heart disease in the general aging population.”

2/23/11, Salk Institute