Youthful regeneration of aging heart muscle via GDF-11

In the previous decade, researchers identified an obscure blood protein called GDF-11. This was shown to have regenerative properties upon the cardiac muscle in age-related diastolic heart failure. The substance was found to be present at high levels in youth, and lower levels in old age. When elderly mice were supplemented with increased GDF-11, it had a dramatic effect on their hearts – restoring heart size and muscle wall thickness to a much earlier state.

Demonstrated that age-related cardiac hypertrophy can be reversed via exposure to a young circulatory environment. These experiments revealed that age-related cardiac hypertrophy is at least in part mediated by circulating factors, such as GDF11, which is able to reverse the condition. The reversal of cardiac hypertrophy in old mice exposed to a young circulation cannot be explained by a   reduction in blood pressurein the older mice. An extensive proteomics analysis was performed on the serum and plasma of the animals. GDF11 was reduced in the circulation of aged mice and its levels were restored to those in young animals by parabiosis.

This offered a potential way of treating heart failure and aging in people. A series of clinical trials, beginning in the late 2010s, confirmed this. By 2026, it's becoming fairly routine for doctors to repair cardiac damage and restore human hearts to earlier states, based on the GDF-11 protein. Along with stem cells and other advances this decade, science is gradually chipping away at the factors which cause people to die.