Aubrey de Grey on Progress Towards Rejuvenation Therapies Targeting Cellular Senescence

There are at present many programs of medical research and development focused on senescent cells: selectively destroying them, suppressing their inflammatory secretions, or preventing cells from becoming senescent in the first place. The accumulation of senescent cells is an important contribution to degenerative aging, and senolytic treatments that clear a sizable fraction of such cells produce a noteworthy degree of rejuvenation in mice. The first human trials are underway, and soon enough the world will wake to the fact that much of the inflammatory dysfunction of aging can be eliminated by existing, cheap drugs such as the dasatinib and quercetin combination. With investment money flowing freely into start-ups developing senotherapeutics, and companies like Unity Biotechnology already conducting human trials, Aubrey de Grey is bullish about the sector. "The field of targeting senescent cells has completely exploded. And I would say that it's now become the highest profile area across all the hallmarks of aging. But there's definitely a spectrum of degrees of understanding - there are some people that understand the whole thing really well, and some people who don't." A simplistic view of the field is that senescent cells are bad for us, and, because there are more of them in older people than there are in younger people, they are associated with aging, so we need to reduce them. "I use the term "death-resistant cells", which doesn't have any connotations ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs