Vaccination as a Limited Option for Removal of Senescent Cells

In today's open access paper, the authors demonstrate a form of vaccination against a surface marker that appears on a subset of senescent T cells that reside in fat tissue, thus directing the rest of the immune system to attack and destroy these cells. There is good evidence for excess fat tissue to result in an increased burden of senescent cells, which disrupt metabolism via the generation of inflammatory signals. A novel branch of medicine is under construction, based on senolytic therapies capable of selectively destroying senescent cells in aged tissues. The growing numbers of senescent cells in older people (and even larger numbers in older obese people) contribute to near all conditions of aging. Removing them has proven to be very beneficial in animal studies, reversing the progression of numerous age-related diseases. A global, always-on mechanism to remove senescent cells has been shown to improve health and longevity in mice, but is probably not a good idea for human medicine. Senescence is a harmful process only when it runs awry, when senescent cells accumulate over time. Senescent cells are constantly created in a youthful metabolism, and serve useful purposes in suppression of cancer, wound healing, and other processes. They are near all rapidly destroyed, either by the immune system or by programmed cell death mechanisms. Only when they linger are they problematic, as starts to happen with aging. A vaccine that provoked constant, efficient destruction ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs