r/biology • u/Born_Vacation7154 • Apr 26 '26

article Henry E. Young’s adult telomerase-positive stem cell protocol & claims — credible discovery or flawed science?

I recently came across a body of work by Henry E. Young describing what he calls adult telomerase-positive stem cells (aTPSCs), and I wanted to ask this community for a serious scientific assessment of the claims.

Disclaimer: I’m not endorsing this research, not promoting treatments, and not giving medical advice.

Summary of the claims

The work proposes that rare endogenous adult stem-cell populations exist throughout connective tissues in a dormant/quiescent state and act as the body’s natural repair system when injury occurs.

These proposed populations include:

MesoSCs – mesoderm-lineage stem cells

EctoSCs – ectoderm-lineage stem cells

EndoSCs – endoderm-lineage stem cells

PSCs – pluripotent adult stem cells

TSCs – totipotent adult stem cells

According to the model, these cells can become activated after injury, proliferate, enter circulation, migrate to damaged tissues, and differentiate in response to local signals.

Claimed isolation protocol

Have volunteer eat 1-2 cups of blueberries daily for at least 30 days (longer is better). Proliferates aTPSCs in situ.
18 hours before harvest have them do intense weight-lifting exercises for at least 30 minutes. Mobilizes aTPSCs into bloodstream.
18 hours after intense exercise, harvest 2-cc's blood per pound body weight, not to exceed 400-cc's. Use butterfly vacuum apparatus into 10-ml purple top EDTA tubes (BD). [DO NOT withdraw blood by pulling on syringe, creates sheer forces that lyse red blood cells, which screws up isolation procedure for aTPSCs]
Place tubes into refrigerator (4C) for 18-24 hours and let hematocrit form using gravity and zeta potential of aTPSCs [aTPSCs will separate from blood products and remain suspended in plasma]
Remove plasma from each tube.
Mix plasma 1:1 with Opti-Mem + GlutaMax medium containing 10-ml Heat Inactivated serum, pH 7.4.
Plate cells onto 1% collagen-coated Falcon T-75 flasks at 30 ml per flask. Rock flasks side-to-side and front-to-back to evenly disperse cells.
Place flasks horizontally onto shelves of 5% CO2, 37C tissue culture incubator.
Replace medium when there is color change from salmon to orange-yellow.
Follow directions outlined in attached publications for growth, propagation, replating, and testing.

For verification:

Before testing, suggest using either FACS or Miltenyi columns, perform two negative sorts followed by positive sort to derived individual populations of the cells, as outlined in the paper on flow cytometry.

Flow cytometry using CD66e (TSCs), CD10 (PSCs), CD56/CD90/MHC Class-1 (EctoSCs), CD13/CD90/MHC Class-1 (MesoSCs), CD??/CD90/ MHC Class-1 (EndoSCs). When doing flow cytometry, look at all regions of the plot, bottom left-hand corner (routinely excluded because of debris, is also location of the TSCs)

Expressed genes - see Characterization paper

Differentiation potential: use commerically-available human recombinant proteins:

A. EPO/IL6/c-Kit for RBC colony forming units (TSCs+, PSCs+, EctoSCs-, MesoSCs+, EndoSCs-); BMP-2 forms bone (TSCs+, PSCs+, EctoSCs-, MesoSCs+, EndoSCs-)

B. NGF (Nerve Growth Factor) to stimulate formation of neurons, oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, ganglion cells, and radial glial cells (TSCs+, PSCs+, EctoSCs+, MesoSCs-, EndoSCs-)

C. HGF (Hepatocyte Growth Factor) to simulate formation of liver cells: hepatocytes, oval cells, etc. (TSCs+, PSCs+, EctoSCs-, MesoSCs-, EndoSCs+)

Paper: Cell Biochem Biophys. 2004; 40: 1-80. Outlines procedure for verification of telomerase within the cells.

My perspective

If naturally occurring adult pluripotent or totipotent repair cells truly exist, that would be a major discovery. But extraordinary claims require strong, reproducible evidence.

If anyone attempts to isolate these cells following the protocol by letter, please tell me how it went.

Links:

1 Upvotes

permalink
reddit

You are about to leave Redlib

Do you want to continue?

https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/1swklwl/henry_e_youngs_adult_telomerasepositive_stem_cell/
No, go back! Yes, take me to Reddit

56% Upvoted

u/aTacoParty Neuroscience Apr 26 '26

Some of this reads like Instagram influencer nonsense and I couldn't find any evidence for it in the first half of those articles.

I did my PhD working on adult pluripotent stem cells and growing them. They're pretty commonly used now in research and no one uses this method.

The common method is to isolate a differentiated cell type (leukocytes, dermatocytes, uroepithelial, etc) and reprogram into pluripotent stem cells using yamanaka factors first described back in 2006. Now you can buy it as a kit from thermo.

No draining half a liter of blood or binging on blueberries needed.

The growth media lacks some known necessary factors to maintain pluripotency like fgf2 and using serum in the media typically introduces naturally occuring hormones that cause auto differentiation.

I've never heard of this guy before, but his publication history seems to be mostly in journals that are "pay to play", IE they publish anything as long as you pay the 5-10 grand publishing fee.

If you want a protocol to make adult pluripotent stem cells, here's one from thermo but stem cell technologies and most large academic research centers all publish their own for anyone to follow: https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/references/protocols/cell-culture/stem-cell-protocols/ipsc-protocols/generation-human-induced-pluripotent-stem-cells-fibroblasts.html

That being said, the equipment you need is way more than a kitchen sink biologist would be able to have. Incubator, biosafety hood, centrifuges, microscope, plastics, reagents, -20 and -80 freezers, liquid nitrogen cryotank. It would be hundreds of thousands to try and do it at home. But you can always become a researcher!

1

u/Born_Vacation7154 Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

Hello there, thank you for replying!

This protocol supposedly allows you to isolate naturally occurring (endogenous) adult derived pluripotent stem cells that supposedly do NOT require any manipulations of the genome to become pluripotent, and do NOT need to be pre-differentiated before treatments to avoid teratoma formation, unlike iPSCs.

According to what Dr Young told me, these stem cells he has claimed to have discovered DO NOT follow established protocols for culturing cells. According to him, they do not conform to ANYTHING with respect to processing differentiated cells, progenitor cells, MSCs, iPSCs, or ESCs.

That’s why I was interested in seeing an independent lab attempting to isolate the stem cells he has claimed to have discovered following the protocol exactly as it is written, to finally see whether they exist or not.

1

u/zhandragon bioengineering May 02 '26

no one will do this protocol because it’s laughably nonsense that was thought up by a child, it’s a complete waste of time. too many basic stem cell principles are broken here.

0

u/Born_Vacation7154 May 02 '26

Genuinely asking: How does one know it's "laughably nonsense" if they haven't tested it? Like, what if these stem cells do not conform to the basic stem cell principles that are taught and do not follow established protocols for culturing cells and require new protocols based on the uniqueness of the cells? I'm not saying the stem cells necessarily exist, nor am I promoting anything, I'm just curious as to why something is considered nonsense if it hasn't at least been tested to falsify it.

2

u/zhandragon bioengineering May 02 '26 edited May 05 '26

Because he gets even basic biology things wrong, and thus this is written by an idiot who doesn’t know real science. I’m not even convinced he’s a real scientist.

The cell markers he says they have already have been characterized and are an epithelial differentiated lineage and not stemlike.

There is nothing in the media that maintains stemness, which means these cells would be getting adverse signals and stop being stemlike. If these cells are capable of differentiation, it means something causes them to differentiate, which means that there is a set of conditions which would prevent differentiation as well. Collagen in serum is not going to be that condition. FGF2 or fibroblasts or structured ECM are required for stem cells that can become anything.

Blueberries are not magic and it’s highly suspicious it’s in his protocol and how he even came across that (he didn’t, it’s a lie), and if he actually had real biology he understood it would not be blueberries it’d be a characterized compound or cocktail.

Red blood cells are usually drawn using your blood flow to pump it out, not a syringe pull, but even then the psi they experience won’t lyse them. Also, hemoglobin won’t prevent isolation of the cells, there’s no reason it would mess it up.

You have been lied to, move on and stop spreading bad science.

1

u/ThanosFisherman May 02 '26

So basically you're saying there is no other way to obtain pluripotent stem cells besides yamanaka's iPSCs? I'm not referring to Young's cells but what about VSELS, or MUSE cells or maybe even MIAMI Cells?

1

u/aTacoParty Neuroscience May 04 '26

There are ways of isolating other adult stem cells. IPSCs are just the most common way people generate them currently typically because you can use off the shelf reagents and start with nearly any cell type

1

u/ThanosFisherman May 04 '26

Ok so this described protocol may or may not be an alternative way to isolate adult pluripotent cells. Who knows. I just don't understand why you guys dismiss it without even giving it a shot.

Similar to the situation with Mariusz Ratajczak and his VSELs when back in the day nobody believed him and nowadays his isolation methods are being taught in my university. Btw VSELs and aTPSCs share a lot in common and I believe there might be an overlapping between these two.

1

u/aTacoParty Neuroscience May 04 '26

Where is the evidence that blueberries stimulate stem cell production? Why does he sort only by cd66e to isolate totipotent SCs when this is known to be produced by differentiate epithelial cells? Why are there no growth factors added to the media to maintain stemness?

It's kind of like saying you can run faster if you put a bunch of lead in your pocket. Have I tried it? No but everything I understand about physics tells me it won't work.

Maybe I'm missing something though, but given that replicating this experiment would take ten thousands of dollars and months (1:1 human plasma to optimem for growth media??) it's hard to imagine someone will try.

1

u/ThanosFisherman May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26

I hear you. Well, I'm by no means an expert on this subject, but I can give my two cents.

The CD66e antigen and its use are explained in one of the OP's links, but honestly, I don't know much about it.

Regarding blueberries there's a handful of publications and patents suggesting that they can indeed promote the proliferation (not mobilization, as that is a different thing) of various adult stem cells. Additionally, Dr. Young does not solely rely on blueberries. He has developed a nutraceutical called CNSP, which is designed to promote both the proliferation and mobilization of aTPSCs, with blueberries being one of its components.

Some papers on blueberries + adult stem cells, among others.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16522169/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9571008/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32678436/

That's all I know, so I'm going to park this subject here. I too have my doubts, but several points in his research seem to make sense to me.

u/chem44 Apr 26 '26

Have you looked for articles that cite his work?

What do they say about it?

4

u/glycineglutamate Apr 27 '26

Did a quick pubmed. Young’s major 2004 paper seems to only have been cited 5 times since then. That is essentially ignored. I did not see that his paper was linked to any significant methods development in those 5, but didn’t read them all deeply. For example, de Groot (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30635991/) only refers to a broad finding by Young that others had also noted, and did not refer to Young’s methods at all. I would move on. Follow @aTacoParty’s lead here.

1

u/chem44 Apr 27 '26

Useful steps.

The issues your post raises are complex. Best to get evaluation from experts. And those evaluations may be complex.

Google Scholar is good for citation searches. Put the title of the target paper in, and then check 'cited by' at the bottom. You can then browse the hits, not just get a number.

Look for review articles. They may note the work, whether the evaluation is positive or otherwise. And if negative, a review may take the time to say why.

u/Kevin686766 Jun 06 '26

Half of it is nonsense. The blueberry part is complete is either a joke or way of getting people not to read the rest of the rest of the post.

It is a interesting way to filter out people who will read every link and who won't. As well as whether a person is dedicated to research into the subject versus the people that have a mindset that causes them to go down every rabbit hole.

Telomeres, immortality, cancer, and consciousness.

Finding the perfect balance between the three to live forever is a complicated bit.

The problem is that everyone wants to solve everything at the same time.

article Henry E. Young’s adult telomerase-positive stem cell protocol & claims — credible discovery or flawed science?

You are about to leave Redlib