A group of labs have been racing to find the factors that explain why young blood seems to rejuvenate the more elderly animals when transferred into them. Amy Wagers and colleagues from Harvard discovered that a specific protein, GDF11, in blood decreases as the animals get older and injecting old mice with GDF11 can partially reverse age-related thickening of the heart. They also reported that GDF11 could rejuvenate the rodents’ muscles and brains in two articles last year in Science.
These findings have since then been criticized both by cardiac physiologist Steven Houser’s group at Temple University and David Glass ‘s group from the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. Houser reported GDF injection have no effect on heart thickness in older mice while Glass found GDF11 levels in blood actually rise with age in rats and people, and GDF11 injections inhibited muscle regeneration in young mice.
Wagers and colleagues recently published results in Circulation Research to reclaim the anti-aging effect of GDF11. In dispute to the contradicting findings, Wagers pointed out that the Novartis group’s assay probably detects immunoglobulin, instead of GDF11 while the Temple group’s results was likely affected by variability in actual protein level in commercial GDF11.
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