Rejuvenating aged stem cells: therapeutic strategies to extend health and lifespan

Aging is associated with a global decline in stem cell function. To date, several strategies have been proposed to rejuvenate aged stem cells: most of these result in functional improvement of the tissue where the stem cells reside, but the impact on the lifespan of the whole organism has been less clearly established. Here, we review some of the most recent work dealing with interventions that improve the regenerative capacity of aged somatic stem cells in mammals and that might have important translational possibilities. Overall, we underscore that somatic stem cell rejuvenation represents a strategy to improve tissue homeostasis upon aging and present some recent approaches with the potential to affect health span and lifespan of the whole organism. Aging is associated with an impairment in stem cell function and several strategies for stem cell rejuvenation have been proposed: exercise, dietary restriction, reprogramming, senolytics, increasing autophagy, youthful blood factors exchange, and restoring cell polarity. Here, we review these strategies and their effects on rejuvenating stem cells in different tissues and underline when stem cell rejuvenation was able to improve health and lifespan. image