Young Blood
Shelli Dyer
UConn Health Center
October 27, 2015
The Fountain of Youth, a fabled spring believed to rejuvenate those who bathe in it, has a long history of leading explorers on quests for its discovery. The 16th century Spanish conquistador, Juan Ponce de León, allegedly voyaged the Atlantic in search for new land that contained the vitality-restoring fountain. Ponce, of course, never found the restorative water and some modern historians argue that Ponce was never actually in search for everlasting life, but rather gold and land.
The legend of the magical spring will endure, however, because humans have an innate desire for longevity. While the Fountain of Youth will remain a myth, it turns out that longevity may not, according to Stanford University professor Tony Wyss-Coray. By connecting the circulatory systems of young and aged mice using heterochronic parabiosis, research showed that young blood rejuvenated diverse peripheral organs including the heart, pancreas, and liver in the aged mice. These results suggested that the systemic environment might be involved in aging, leading Dr. Wyss-Coray and his team to hypothesize that the circulatory factors could also impact the aging of the brain.
In following studies, Wyss-Coray and others sought to determine if their hypothesis was true. The results showed that young blood had a rejuvenating effect within the central nervous system (CNS) of the aged mice. Exposing old brains to young blood in the parabiosis model using mice:
• Strengthened synapses in the dentate gyrus (DG)
• Upregulated genes involved in learning and memory
• Increased neural stem and progenitor cells
• Improved cerebral blood flow
Although the factors mediating these changes remain unclear, these findings suggest that systemic factors may play a therapeutic role in treating degenerative diseases and diseases of aging. In our quest longevity, we can view our scientists as the modern day explorers for the Fountain of Youth. For thousands of years, every culture and civilization across the world has dreamed of finding the key to prolonged life, and Dr. Wyss-Coray brings us closer.