The Path to the Clinic for First Generation Senolytic Therapies

Senolytic therapies selectively destroy lingering senescent cells in old tissues, improving health as a result. Senescent cells, while never very large in absolute numbers, even in late life, actively maintain a degraded state of tissue and organ function via secretions that provoke chronic inflammation, detrimental alterations to the behavior of normal cells, and harmful remodeling of tissue structure, such as the development of fibrosis. A large number of animal studies have demonstrated rapid rejuvenation and reversal of aspects of specific age-related conditions to result from clearance of senescent cells. The best of the early senolytic approaches, small molecule drugs and plant extracts that sabotage senescent cell resistance to apoptosis, such as the dasatinib and quercetin combination, manage to destroy as many as half of the senescent cells in a given tissue, with the degree of clearance varying widely between therapies and tissues. Given the animal data, which is far and away the most robust and impressive of all of the approaches to the treatment of aging attempted to date, there is an enthusiasm for human clinical trials. Unfortunately, these early small molecule drugs are largely off-patent or close to it, and so near all of the sizeable funding in the field goes towards the development of new, patentable senolytic therapies rather than the validation of existing low-cost treatments that might be more rapidly brought to the clinic. Still, a number of clini...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs