Adult Stem Cells and the End of Aging

I believe therapies like those Dr. Rosenthal described -- using adult stem cells as opposed to embryonic stem cells, which are at the heart of the stem cell controversy -- are and will continue to be a major, exciting part of the future of medicine, especially anti-aging medicine.

As you age, your stem cells diminish in quality and quantity, so just when you require strong stem cells the most, you’re becoming deficient. Hence your organs and tissues eventually wear out and need to be restored or replaced.
In addition to eventually helping restore internal organs, immune systems and more, adult stem cell therapies hold the promise of restoring old skin.
 
There’s little risk of rejection when using your own adult stem cells, so you’re less likely to need dangerous immunosuppressive drugs that are common with some treatments. And besides certain ethical issues and regulatory barriers to embryonic stem cell therapy, adult stem cells may hold several technical advantages. For one, they may be more viable.

What makes stem cells so special is their potential to develop into many different cell types. When a stem cell divides, it either becomes another type of cell, such as a muscle cell or brain cell, or it remains a stem cell. Further, these cells act as an internal repair system in many types of tissues, dividing a seemingly infinite number of times to replenish other cells.

If stems cells can be directed to turn into specific cell types, they could offer an ongoing source of replacement to cells and tissues, and be used to treat diseases including:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• Spinal cord injury
• Stroke
• Burns

• Heart disease
• Diabetes
• Osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis

Every year 50,000 people die waiting for organ transplants. Every day, 100,000 die from aging-related diseases and conditions. What if we could replace virtually every organ in patients’ bodies with young pristine organs as they age?

Recently, steps toward achieving this goal have advanced greatly. For instance, an advanced tuberculosis patient successfully received a trachea transplant, using her own stem cells. Researchers from four European universities took a trachea from a deceased donor, removed its cells, leaving the extracellular structure, and re-seeded it with stem cells from her bone marrow and elsewhere.

Other scientists have brought a dead rat’s heart back to life by rebuilding it from a matrix, or a bare framework of tissue filled with young rat stem cells. They stripped the dead heart of its cells and used the remaining frame as the foundation for the new heart. This is headed in the direction of providing a new source of "reconditioned" organs for transplant operations.

After a week of being cultured in the laboratory, the cells started to beat in rhythm, and a few days later, the reconditioned heart actually began to pump blood. 

The Maximum Life Foundation has discovered an emerging technology that could fine-tune these treatments by making every adult stem cell therapy in the world much more safe and effective.

Your cells become randomly damaged or mutated over time, but a small percentage may incur relatively little damage -- or may escape damage altogether. So some of your stem cells may be as pristine as those you enjoyed as a teenager, or even as an infant.

This technology identifies, isolates and amplifies those “pristine” stem cells from the patient’s own population for therapies. In principle, this means a heart patient could have his or her heart treated with “young” stem cells rather than the old mutated cells currently used, with potentially far more effective results.

It truly is an exciting field and one that is continuing to advance by the day, so stay tuned for important updates and news, and read through the related articles below for more cutting-edge anti-aging research.