Experimental research on mice is offering an intriguing glimpse into how stem cell treatments might one day help slow the aging process.

This new research was conducted on mice that had been bred to have progeria, a disorder that causes premature aging. Mice with the condition typically live only 21 to 28 days instead of the usual two years.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh took 17-day-old mice with progeria and injected them with stem cell-like cells called stem/progenitor cells that they had taken from the muscle tissue of younger, healthier mice.

Mice injected with these cells lived two to three times longer than expected.

The full results appear in the journal Nature Communications.

Progenitor cells are similar to stem cells in that they have can become many kinds of cells, but are more limited than stem cells and cannot divide and reproduce indefinitely. Their main role is to replace cells lost by normal cell death.

One of the researchers, Dr. Johnny Huard, a professor in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, at the Pitt School of Medicine, says he and his team were amazed with the results.

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