Is it Possible to Safely Tip the Balance in Cancer Treatment Towards Cell Death Rather than Cell Senescence?

Most cancer treatments produce a lot of senescent cells in the course of killing cancerous cells. This is thought to be the primary reason as to why cancer survivors have a reduced life expectancy and greater burden of age-related disease. Senescent cells secrete disruptive, inflammatory signals that harm tissue function when consistently present. Growing numbers of senescent cells in old tissues are an important contribution to degenerative aging. The straightforward approach to this issue would be to treat cancer patients with senolytic therapies to clear senescent cells after the anti-cancer treatment is complete. Whether or not one can usefully interfere during the anti-cancer treatments is an interesting question, and one that likely lacks a simple answer. Here researchers conduct a preliminary investigation of one potential point of intervention that appears to bias cells towards destruction rather than senescence, but only in some cancer types and treatment types. A great deal of further work would need to take place in order to determine whether this is actually safe in the scenario of cancer therapies. A number of anti-cancer strategies, which are based on chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy or the use of CDK4/CDK6 inhibitors and epigenetic modulators may promote cellular senescence in cancer and normal cells and tissues as an adverse side effect. Cellular senescence, a state of permanent cell cycle arrest with well characterized biochemical...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs