Making Skin Cells 30 Years Younger

Stock photo of fibroblasts (skin cells) labeled with fluorescent dyes. 

(Image credit: iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Researchers in the U.K. have developed a way to reverse the aging process in skin cells, turning back the biological clock by about 30 years.


De-aging cells has become increasingly common in the last decade, with researchers reprogramming multiple mouse, rat and human cell types. But never before have cells been de-aged by so many years and still retained their specific type and function.


The method, developed by Diljeet Gill, a postdoctoral candidate at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, and his colleagues, was published April 8 in the journal eLife, and has been dubbed "maturation phase transient reprogramming."


The researchers applied this technique to fibroblasts (a common type of skin cell) from three middle-aged donors — who averaged at about 50 years old — then compared them to younger cells from donors aged 20 to 22. The researchers found that the middle-aged cells were similar to the younger cells, both chemically and genetically. When explored further, the team even noticed that the technique had affected genes related to age-related diseases, like Alzheimer's disease and cataracts.

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In addition, Gill and his colleagues looked at the behavior of the fibroblasts to determine if they could also act like younger skin cells. When they wounded a layer of the cells, they found that the rejuvenated cells quickly moved to fill the gap — the same way that younger cells behave when healing wounds.


This study is not the first to de-age skin cells. That title goes to Nobel prize winner Shinya Yamanaka, who genetically reprogrammed mouse skin cells and turned them into so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, back in 2006. These iPSCs resemble cells in early development, and have the potential to form any cell type in the body.  READ MORE...