Against photoaging of the skin
Some plastic surgeons are already using stem cells to repair sun-damaged skin. But it remained unknown exactly how stem cells collected from the patient's body work to rejuvenate the skin of the face.
A new study provides an answer: within a few weeks, stem cells eliminate the sun-damaged reticular network of elastin protein and replace them with intact tissues and structures in all layers of the skin, even in the deepest.
Injection of the patient's own mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is sufficient to cause complete structural regeneration of sun-aged skin.
Researchers from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the University of Verona, Italy, evaluated the effect of MSCs at the cellular and molecular level on sun-damaged (photoaging) facial skin. All 20 volunteers (average age 56 years) planned to have a surgical facelift. The participants lived in the northeastern part of Brazil, where there is so much sunlight and, consequently, ultraviolet radiation.
A small sample of abdominal fat was taken from each patient to isolate MSCs and reproduce them in culture. Cultured stem cells were injected subcutaneously in the face area in front of the ear. When the patients underwent facelift surgery three to four months later, skin samples from the stem cell-treated area were compared with untreated skin.
Histological studies have shown that the treatment of MSCs led to an overall improvement in the structure of the skin. Stem cells caused a partial reverse change in sun–related damage to elastin, the main structure of the skin that undergoes photoaging. In the surface layers of the skin, the areas treated with stem cells, the researchers noted the regeneration of a new, fully organized network of fibers and remodeling of the extracellular matrix of the skin.
In the deeper layer of the skin, the tangled, degraded and dysfunctional deposits of sun-damaged elastin were replaced by a normal network of elastin fibers. These changes were confirmed by molecular markers of the processes of absorption of altered elastin and the production of a new one.
The data obtained indicate that stem cells trigger each of the many cellular and molecular level pathways involved in skin regeneration. The use of the patient's own mesenchymal stem cells may be an actual proposal for an anti-aging effect in the regeneration of photodamaged human skin. The restoration of the structures of all layers of the skin leads to an increase in elasticity and an improvement in the appearance of the facial skin.
Article by Charles-de-Sá et al. Photoaged Skin Therapy with Adipose-Derived Stem Cells is published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on Wolters Kluwer: Stem Cell Treatments 'Go Deep' to Regenerate Sun-Damaged Skin.