Hi! I have some doubts, whether aging in its whole complexity can be emulated in cells lines, but it will be interesting to follow the suggestions from other researchers. At least certain aspects of aging in in vitro models may even occur in such simplified systems and may even be accellerated, e.g. by radiation exposure or a range of chemical agents (e.g. inducing oxidative stress, protein phosporylation including tau etc). Maybe you may look for cell lines derived from patients with disease-related accelerated aging, like the spectrum of progeria disorders. I am unaware of such cell lines, but you may have a look at a cell repository like ATCC. When studying ageing in a cell line I would recommend to check how many passages your cell lines have already undergone (e.g. what is left from the telomeres).

Good luck! 

 Hi!

 I work with fibroblasts from patients with Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS), you can get them from the Coriell Institute.

https://catalog.coriell.org/0/Sections/BrowseCatalog/DiseaseDetail.aspx?PgId=403&omim=PRO17667&coll=  

I hope this helps!

Work by Allen Butterfield I recall used the words "aging in a dish" (or maybe it was a joke). The idea was that as cells derived from pre- or neonates mature in culture, over say, 1 month, the changes that occur tend to parallel those that are seen during aging. Of course, it is not that simple and not all reviewers will agree with you that this is even remotely representative of what happens during aging. Also, these are not cell lines but primary cell cultures. Others have cultured cells from aged animals, but the cells were never that healthy.

We used a similar approach here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9204944

Sorry, I can't find the Butterfield reference.

The Coriell Institute cells are a good idea as Marco points out.

Some fantastic suggestion. HGPS is certainly a grate idea, this was something we had considered but were not aware of a cell repository!! Thank you

Hi Lyle, interesting suggestion, just have concerns over how you would distinguish between changes in phenotype due to been maintained in culture and mutations resulting from ageing?

In vitro i.e cell line approaches will have glaring weaknesses such as lack of accumulated mutations in gDNA and mitochondrial DNA etc. Some things cannot be emulated by serial passages in culture.

Dear Liaque,

Yes Coriell institute is a good repositary for aging cell lines and they people have a good collection of cell lines from animals of different ages.

But if you want to study the effect of aging an a range of  proteins, I will suggest you that you should develop your own system in the cells of interest which are easily available with you which can even be skin fibroblasts. Because in that model, you will be able to study the change in expression pattern of different proteins in a time dependent manner (temporal profiling) which is a very essential criteria of your study. I will suggest use of HydroxyUrea (HU) which can induce aging by reducing many parameters which are characterstics of young cells upto a great significance level. The chemical is quiet cheap and 1-2 concentrations are required to induce aging.

Please have a look on the link below and you will find a detailed description of the protocol.

http://www.nature.com/cddis/journal/v5/n3/full/cddis201482a.html

Hope it helps !