A Cautious Industry View of the Promise of Senolytics

This article on senolytic therapies to selectively remove senescent cells in old tissues is in part a matter of Unity Biotechnology talking up their position. The company suffered from first mover disadvantage in bringing senolytic drugs into clinical development. The field has made progress very rapidly over the last decade, and startups founded even just a couple of years after Unity's launch benefited from greater knowledge and a selection of better technologies to work with. Still, one can be talking up one's position and also be right. The accumulation of senescent cells is profoundly harmful, a significant contribution to degenerative aging, and senolytics are indeed a promising approach to the treatment of aging. Widespread use will greatly transform the field of medicine. The interesting thing about small molecule senolytic therapies is that the first of these tested in animals and humans, the dasatinib and quercetin combination, is actually relative good, even though it clears at most half of the senescent cells in a given tissue, and much less than that in many tissue types. Alternative approaches that followed have struggled to improve on its effectiveness, at least going by published data. While the industry moves slowly, and approvals of new drugs are years away yet, there is little to stop an older individual deciding that the clinical trial safety profile for dasatinib and quercetin looks decent, and setting forth to try it for themselves. Senolyt...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs