Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

MSC-based therapies have great potential for treating many age-related diseases. Due to biosafety concerns and FDA regulations, autologous stem cells are preferable for cell-based therapies. Unfortunately, the quantity and quality of MSCs decrease with aging, inhibiting progress in developing autologous MSC-based applications. In the present study, we propose an innovative approach for rescuing aged MSCs by separating a sub-population of more “youthful” cells, using biomarkers (size and SSEA-4 expression), from a population of cells obtained from the BM of elderly donors (human subjects); and protecting and amplifying this “youthful” sub-population by culture on a “young microenvironment” using our established patented technology (BM-ECM produced by young cells). The results demonstrate that by applying this approach we were able to identify and isolate a subpopulation of BM-MSCs from elderly donors, displaying a less “aged” phenotype, and culture them on a young microenvironment (BM-ECM) to significantly improve their proliferation and differentiation capacity.