Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B (Mar 2024)

Extracellular vesicles from human urine-derived stem cells delay aging through the transfer of PLAU and TIMP1

  • Shanshan Rao,
  • Zehui He,
  • Zun Wang,
  • Hao Yin,
  • Xiongke Hu,
  • Yijuan Tan,
  • Tengfei Wan,
  • Hao Zhu,
  • Yi Luo,
  • Xin Wang,
  • Hongming Li,
  • Zhenxing Wang,
  • Xinyue Hu,
  • Chungu Hong,
  • Yiyi Wang,
  • Mingjie Luo,
  • Wei Du,
  • Yuxuan Qian,
  • Siyuan Tang,
  • Hui Xie,
  • Chunyuan Chen

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 3
pp. 1166 – 1186

Abstract

Read online

Aging increases the risks of various diseases and the vulnerability to death. Cellular senescence is a hallmark of aging that contributes greatly to aging and aging-related diseases. This study demonstrates that extracellular vesicles from human urine-derived stem cells (USC-EVs) efficiently inhibit cellular senescence in vitro and in vivo. The intravenous injection of USC-EVs improves cognitive function, increases physical fitness and bone quality, and alleviates aging-related structural changes in different organs of senescence-accelerated mice and natural aging mice. The anti-aging effects of USC-EVs are not obviously affected by the USC donors’ ages, genders, or health status. Proteomic analysis reveals that USC-EVs are enriched with plasminogen activator urokinase (PLAU) and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases 1 (TIMP1). These two proteins contribute importantly to the anti-senescent effects of USC-EVs associated with the inhibition of matrix metalloproteinases, cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A (P16INK4a), and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1A (P21cip1). These findings suggest a great potential of autologous USC-EVs as a promising anti-aging agent by transferring PLAU and TIMP1 proteins.

Keywords