The head of a research team from Harvard told KP about the unique experiment and how the miracle of cell engineering can help fight cancer and aging.
IN THE NAME OF YOUTH
This is the first experiment on Earth when researchers have combined organisms located at different poles in terms of life expectancy. The most popular experimental animals, mice, live up to 2.5 to 3 years and often die of cancer. The naked mole rat is a unique representative of rodents that lives more than 10 (!) Times longer, and retains signs of youth for a long time throughout its life: dense muscles, strong bones, good immunity, etc.
Scientists have long been struggling to unravel the mystery: why did nature allow distant relatives of mice to live incomparably more, preserving the young state of the body? And one more very important point: mole rats practically do not get cancer (cases of failure are rare, while mice in old age are affected by cancer almost without exception).
If you reveal these secrets, you can try to save other animals from cancer, prolong the youth and life of other animals - for example, our beloved cats, and then, possibly, humans. Researchers are taking different paths: someone is trying to look for genes that may be responsible for certain processes associated with aging, in order to then affect these sections of DNA. But there are a huge number of processes and genes, experiments on enumerating them can last for many, many years. Professor of Harvard Medical School, head of the aging research laboratory Vadim Gladyshev with his team, which includes a graduate student of the Russian Skoltech Alexei Mikhalchenko, decided to go the other way.
The most popular experimental animals, mice, live up to 2.5 - 3 years and often die of cancer
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GERM-MIX
“We took connective tissue cells from the kidneys and lungs of the naked mole rat and with the help of special proteins (Yamanaka factors) turned them into ips cells - these are universal stem cells that can give rise to a variety of organs and tissues,” the researcher explained to KP. whom we contacted immediately after the publication of his impressive article in the prestigious international scientific journal Stem Cell Reports. - Then the ips cells of the mole rat were added to a blastocyst, that is, a mouse embryo at a very early stage of development, and they were planted in a female mouse, where it began to develop. Thus, a "mixture" of organisms was obtained, radically different in terms of the life of animals.
- We had a task to understand: can the cells of a mole rat take root in the embryo of a mouse, in order to subsequently make short-lived mice long-lived, - continues Professor Gladyshev. - And the chosen method - the addition of “universal” ips-cells should facilitate the solution of such a problem: so that the naked mole rat cells integrate as organically as possible into the most varied places of the mouse embryo and do not elicit an immune response.
NATURE MAKES NEW RIDDLES
The idea was a success: half of the 16 chimera embryos began to develop actively, this is a good scientific result. “As part of this experiment, we needed to stop the process at about 2/3 of the development of the embryo - to extract samples, analyze them in different ways and make sure the viability of new organisms,” explains the scientist. “In the course of the study, certain difficulties emerged that could interfere with further development - for example, mole rat cells are“uncomfortable”in a mouse's body, since long-lived rodents have a body temperature lower than that of a mouse, and this, by the way, is assumed to be one of the factors of longevity.
In general, there is still a lot to work on, and at the same time, new inspiring prospects have opened up - the researchers have not yet advertised them, as they are preparing another impressive experiment. "Komsomolskaya Pravda" will follow the development of events.
ANNA DOBRYUKHA
