So We Have Hallmarks of Aging: What Now?

The influential hallmarks of aging paper is now nearly ten years old. It has been twenty years since the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) categorization of causative mechanisms of aging was first put forward, an effort that inspired the hallmarks. Time moves on relentlessly! Are you feeling old yet? Unlike SENS, the hallmarks of aging made no attempt to be a to-do list of research and development approaches that we should be undertaking in order to effectively treat aging. They are, as it says on the label, hallmarks, observations of old cells and tissues. Nonetheless, a to-do list is somewhat the way in which the hallmarks have been taken in much of the research community, for better or worse. It is good that more of that community is on board with the treatment of aging as a goal to be achieved, but on the other hand some of the hallmarks are clearly far downstream from the root causes of aging, and thus probably poor targets for intervention. Given the existence and popularity of the hallmarks of aging, far more cited and discussed than SENS ever was, what next? One might hope that today's open access paper illustrates something of the shape of what is next: that researchers talk less about the hallmarks of aging, and instead talk more about the approaches that might reverse aging, producing rejuvenation. The paper is something of a grab bag of presently popular strategies, with epigenetic reprogramming and senescent cell clearance leading the ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs