Harmful Signals Secreted by Senescent Cells Depend on the Presence of Senescence-Associated Heterochromatin Foci

Now that senescent cells are widely acknowledged as a cause of aging and age-related disease, and now that a large industry is forming to find ways to destroy or otherwise render harmless these cells, a great deal more investigative work into the biochemistry of senescence is taking place than was the case in earlier years. While destruction is very straightforward, and certainly easier to engineer at the present time, a sizable faction of scientists are interested in finding ways to turn off the harmful signals secreted by senescent cells. It is this signaling, the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), that causes all of the damage: chronic inflammation; destructive remodeling of the surrounding tissue structure; encouraging nearby cells to also become senescent; and so forth. Because the SASP is complicated and poorly mapped, and no doubt depends on the operation of scores of interacting mechanisms inside a cell, and few of those mechanisms are particularly well mapped in this context, it seems to me that investigating ways to modulate the SASP is more of an academic exercise than a road to therapies at the present time. It cannot possibly compare in efficiency to destroying senescent cells. The only reason to avoid destroying these cells would be the discovery of essential senescent populations, such as neurons in the brain that are both senescent and carrying out vital functions, perhaps. So far that hasn't been the case: old mice do just fine when give...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs