Future Directions for the Senescence Field

Today's open access paper is, I think, chiefly interesting for the later section in which the authors ponder future directions for the treatment of aging via means of destroying or manipulating the activity of senescent cells. The accumulation of senescent cells is one of the root causes of aging. The creation of senescent cells happens constantly in the undamaged and fully functional tissues of young people, a tiny fraction of these senescent cells manage to evade destruction and linger to cause issues, and given enough time that fraction will grow large enough to kill you. Cellular senescence isn't the only harmful cause of aging, of course. As things stand, senescent cells speed the death that emerges from other forms of damage, and never have the chance to be the cause of death in and of themselves. Aging is a collaborative murder, carried out via the interaction of many distinct processes. Selective destruction of senescent cells appears to work well as an approach to remove their contribution to aging. There are comparatively few such cells, no-one has yet found a population of senescent cells that is sufficiently vital to keep around, and numerous methods of destruction either already exist and are under development. By all measures assessed so far, old mice are greatly improved following removal of even a fraction of their senescent cells. To my eyes at least, the path to the future of the senescence field is the very simple one of finding ever more efficient w...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs