Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) exist in many tissues and have emerged as promising candidates for therapeutic interventions. While MSCs may be used to reverse aging, they themselves also age. For example, bone marrow-derived MSCs from old individuals are known to have reduced ability to produce bone and cartilage cells, while biased towards making adipose tissues, hence aged bone marrow are referred to as "yellow marrow". Here we report, using step-wise treatment with different "cocktails" of small molecules, we turned old skin fibroblasts into much younger MSC-like cells (MSC-LCs), which reversed many aging features including shortened telomere as well as reduced proliferation potentials and differentiation bias. Moreover, MSC-LCs manifest potent effects in bone and cartilage repair in vivo. MSC-LCs also demonstrated strong immune modulatory functions both in vitro and in vivo during liver damage repair. Taken together, our study demonstrated that old skin fibroblasts could be reprogrammed to acquire youth and harbor huge therapeutic values. SOURCE: Kunshan Zhang (kunshan.zhang@gmail.com) -  Tongji Hospital, Tongji University

Pluto Bioinformatics

GSE102983: Rejuvenation and conversion of skin fibroblasts for immune modulation and bone and cartilage repair in vivo