Greater Senescent Cell Burden Correlates with a Worse Cervical Cancer Survival Rate

It is thought that the burden of senescent cells is likely correlated with survival in many cancers. Senescent cells cease to replicate and begin to secrete pro-growth, pro-inflammation signals. Most senescent cells are rapidly destroyed by the immune system, but this process slows with age and thus senescent cells accumulate. Cellular senescence does act to suppress cancer in its earliest stages, by removing those cells most likely to become cancerous. Once a significant number of senescent cells are present, however, their signaling begins to aid cancer growth. Thus we might expect to see that the application of senolytic therapies, capable of selectively destroying senescent cells, will slow down the progression of cancer in many cases. The standard classes of cancer therapy, those that work by damaging cells quite aggressively, have the side-effect of inducing greater levels of cellular senescence throughout the body. They may all become more effective when paired with senolytics. How well women with cervical cancer respond to treatment and survive correlates with the level of 10 proteins in their blood that also are associated with a cell state called senescence. Researchers looked at pretreatment levels of these proteins in the blood of 565 women with stage 2 and 3 cervical cancer, who received standard treatments of internal radiation, called brachytherapy, external radiation, or both. They found that women with low levels of the proteins secreted by senescent...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs