EFFECT ON LIFESPAN OF HIGH YIELD NONMYELOABLATING TRANSPLANTATION OF BONE MARROW FROM YOUNG TO OLD MICE

• Main Authors: Marina eKovina, German eKagarlitskiy, Viktor eZuev, Yuriy eKhodarovich
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2013-08-01
• Series: Frontiers in Genetics
• Subjects: Aging; Bone Marrow Transplantation; Longevity; Stem Cells; life extension
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fgene.2013.00144/full

Tissue renewal is a well-known phenomenon by which old and dying-off cells of various tissues of the body are replaced by progeny of local or circulating stem cells (SC). An interesting question is whether donor stem cells are capable to prolong the lifespan of an ageing organism by tissue renewal.. In this work we investigated the possible use of bone marrow SC for lifespan extension. To this purpose, chimeric C57BL/6 mice were created by transplanting bone marrow from young 1.5-month donors to 21.5-month-old recipients. Transplantation was carried out by means of a recently developed method which allowed to transplant without myeloablation up to 1.5×108 cells, that is, about 25 % of the total BM cells of the mouse. As a result, the mean survival time, counting from the age of 21.5 months, the start of the experiment, was +3.6 and +5.0 (± 0.1) months for the control and experimental groups, respectively, corresponding to a 39% ± 4% increase in the experimental group over the control. In earlier studies on BM transplantation a considerably smaller quantity of donor cells (5×106) was used, about 1 % of the total own BM cells. The recipients before transplantation were exposed to a lethal (for control animals) X-ray dose which eliminated the possibility of studying the lifespan extension by this method.