Persistence of high-replicative capacity in cultured fibroblasts from nonagenarians

Abstract

Earlier studies on human fibroblast cultures have demonstrated an inverse relationship between the total number of population doublings (PDs) and donor age. As more recent studies were unable to replicate these findings, we set out to analyze growth characteristics of fibroblast cultures from nonagenarians who represent the extreme of human lifespan. Therefore, we obtained skin biopsies from 68 participants of the Leiden 85-plus Study, all aged 90 years. None of the 68 strains failed to proliferate and all were easily cultured under highly standardized conditions. Within a time window of 30 months, all strains displayed a high and reproducible replicative capacity that was maintained for at ..