Chia-Hua Kuo

Professor Chia-Hua Kuo’s recent work focuses on the mechanism of exercise-induced senescent cell clearance in muscle tissues. His breakthrough in human aging comes from an unexpected observation in 2018 on identification of senescent stem cells surrounding myofibers in skeletal muscle of young men. He also found significant decreases in senescent cell number following an acute bout of resistance exercise. Moderate intensity exercise does not show similar effect unless an immune preconditioning is applied, suggesting the role of immune surveillance in senescent cell clearance. This result highlights the key role of exercise intensity in muscle rejuvenation. Stem cells in skeletal muscle is a local reserve for muscle cell renewal, which allows dynamical maintenance of youth level of skeletal muscle against acute challenges. Accumulation of senescent stem cells is causally related with declined physical fitness and delayed recovery among inactive individuals especially at higher age. With this knowledge, he developed a patented senolytic sport supplement by selecting an immunostimulant from panax ginseng which can be perfusing into contracting muscle during muscle contraction. This strategy successfully enhances senescent cell clearance and results in significant improvement in endurance performance at high intensity. Both stem cells and immune cells are originally produced from bone marrow. However, bone to body mass ratio decreases with growth and aging. This imbalance will eventually compromise cell renewal and eventually lead to precipitating health problem during the last quarter of life. Professor Kuo’s discovery has recently reported by international media. 郭家驊特聘教授的學術研究方向專注在運動對人體肌肉幹細胞老化程度的影響與內在機制。郭教授對當前知識的突破來自2018年首先在年輕人肌肉發現衰老幹細胞，這些衰老幹細胞在高強度肌力訓練過程自然被清除。而中強度運動則效果不明顯，除非有事前的免疫刺激。肌肉幹細胞為快速再生肌肉的儲備細胞，讓肌肉在不斷承受挑戰下能迅速再生，維持年輕健康狀態。累積衰老幹細胞使體能恢復時間延長，為缺乏運動者特別是高齡者面對各類挑戰恢復能力下降主要原因。郭教授亦發現吞噬性免疫細胞可能涉及清除衰老人體幹細胞的天然作用。在理論應用上，郭教授篩選人蔘中可刺激免疫細胞的化學成分，透過肌肉收縮血液帶入組織加速清除肌肉中的衰老幹細胞，可達到提高體能的結果，專利已產品化，北美銷售迅速成長中。免疫細胞與幹細胞均源自骨髓，隨體重成長，骨骼/體重比例相對失衡，該失衡現象將使全身細胞汰舊換新相對不足，累積衰老細胞，導致人體進入生命期最後四分之一加速老化。郭教授的創新發現亦獲國際科學媒體報導。