Bioassay for monitoring the anti-aging effect of cord blood treatment





Sang-Hun Bae, Ala Jo, Jae Hyun Park, Chul-Woo Lim, Yuri Choi, Juhyun Oh, Ji-Min Park, TaeHo Kong, Ralph Weissleder, Hakho Lee, Jisook Moon


Theranostics, 9(1):1-10 , doi:10.7150/thno.30422


ABSTRACT


Background: Treating aged animals with plasma of an early developmental stage (e.g, umbilical cord plasma) showed an impressive potential to slow age-associated degradation of neuronal and cognitive functions. Translating such findings to clinical realities, however, requires effective ways for assessing treatment efficacy; ideal methods should be minimally invasive, amenable for serial assays, cost-effective, and quantitative.


Materials and Methods: We developed a new biosensor approach to monitor anti-aging therapy. We advanced two key sensor components: i) a blood-borne metabolite was identified as a surrogate aging-marker; and ii) a compact and cost-effective assay system was developed for on-site applications. We treated aged mice either with human umbilical cord plasma or saline; unbiased metabolite profiling on mouse plasma revealed arachidonic acid (AA) as a potent indicator associated with anti-aging effect. We next implemented a competitive magneto-electrochemical sensor (cMES) optimized for AA detection directly from plasma. The developed platform could detect AA directly from small volumes of plasma (0.5 µL) within 1.5 hour.


Results: cMES assays confirmed a strong correlation between AA levels and anti-aging effect: AA levels, while decreasing with aging, increased in the plasma-treated aged mice which also showed improved learning and memory performance.


Conclusions: The cMES platform will empower both pre- and clinical anti-aging research by enabling minimally invasive, longitudinal treatment surveillance; these capacities will accelerate the development of anti-aging therapies, improving the quality of individual lives.


- Fulltext: http://www.thno.org/v09p0001.htm