Hypothalamus of a transgenic mouseWIKIMEDIA, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTHDuring adulthood, the mouse brain manufactures new neurons in several locations, including the hippocampus and the subventricular zone of the forebrain. The hypothalamus, previously identified as an area with an important role in aging, also generates new neurons from neural stem cells. In a study published today (July 26) in Nature, Dongsheng Cai and his team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York connect the dots between these two observations, reporting that hypothalamic neural stem cells have widespread effects on the rate of aging in mice
In what David Sinclair, who studies aging at Harvard Medical School and who was not involved in the work, calls a “Herculean effort,” the researchers “discovered that stem cells in the hypothalamus of the mouse play a role in overall health and life span,” he tells The Scientist.
Cai and his team found that killing hypothalamic neural stem cells accelerates aging, and transplantation additional neural stem cells into the brain region slows it down. Further, the stem cells’ anti-aging effects could be reproduced simply by administering the cells’ secreted vesicles, called exosomes, containing microRNAs (miRNAs).
“If this is true for humans, one could imagine a day when we are treated with these small RNAs injected into our bodies or even implanted with new hypothalamic stem ...
