Cellular Senescence in Lung Disease

Today's open access paper is a review of what is known of the role of cellular senescence in lung disease. With the development of senolytic therapies that can selectively destroy senescent cells, all conditions in which senescent cells contribute meaningfully to pathology may soon be effectively treated. Senescent cells accumulate with age in all tissues, and while never a sizable fraction of all cells, even a comparatively small number of senescent cells can cause chronic inflammation and tissue dysfunction. They secrete a mix of inflammatory signals, growth factors, and other molecules that has a sizable effect on the behavior of surrounding cells. In the short term, this behavior is a necessary part of wound healing and cancer suppression, among other activities, but when sustained over the long term, this contributes to the degeneration and diseases of aging. Taken in the broader context of medical research as a whole, senescence is still poorly mapped, and its role in all too many conditions is not explored in any detail. There is only so much research funding, and only so many research teams. The hundreds of age-related conditions and scores of different tissues in the body are being explored with some sense of prioritization, but a great deal of work remains to be accomplished. The lung in an organ for which the role of cellular senescence in disease been more extensively investigated in recent years, largely because senescent cells are implicated in fibrosis, ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs