SCIENTISTS IDENTIFY STEM CELL ‘NEIGHBOURHOOD’ AS KEY TO HEALTHY AGEING
New Delhi, Jan 14, 2026 : Scientists have uncovered new insights into the biology of ageing, showing that the decline of tissues may begin not within stem cells themselves, but in the surrounding support cells that sustain them. The findings open promising new avenues for research on healthy ageing and long-term tissue regeneration.
The study was carried out by researchers at the Agharkar Research Institute, Pune – an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology – and has been published as a cover article in the international journal Stem Cell Reports.
Using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model system, the researchers examined how reproductive stem cells maintain their function over time. Their work focused on the ovaries, where germline stem cells are supported by neighbouring “cap cells” that form a specialised microenvironment, or niche.
The study found that while germline stem cells are relatively resilient and can function with very low levels of autophagy—the cell’s internal recycling system—the surrounding cap cells are critically dependent on autophagy for their long-term survival. When key autophagy-related genes such as Atg1, Atg5 and Atg9 were selectively switched off in cap cells, these support cells accumulated damage, lost their structural integrity and gradually failed to sustain stem cells.
As the cap cells deteriorated, they were no longer able to provide essential biochemical signals, including Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) cues, required to maintain stem cell identity and function. Although the stem cells themselves remained intrinsically robust, they were eventually lost because their supportive “neighbourhood” collapsed, directly linking microenvironmental decline to loss of tissue regenerative capacity.
The research challenges the traditional view that ageing is driven mainly by damage within individual cells. Instead, it highlights ageing as a community-level process in which the health of support cells plays a decisive role in determining stem cell survival and tissue function.
The study was led by Kiran Suhas Nilangekar and Bhupendra V. Shravage of the Developmental Biology Group at ARI Pune. Their findings position the institute at the forefront of research into how stem cell niches age and act as early “weak links” in tissues.
Although the experiments were conducted in fruit flies, the core biological pathways involved—autophagy and stem cell niche signalling—are conserved across species. Scientists believe the insights could inform future studies in mammalian tissues such as the intestine, skin and muscle, where similar stem cell–niche relationships exist.
The researchers suggest that strengthening or protecting support cells could indirectly prolong stem cell function, pointing towards novel strategies to preserve fertility, tissue health and regenerative capacity during ageing. Further work will explore how different cell types balance resilience and fragility, and whether targeted modulation of autophagy in niche cells can slow age-related tissue decline.