Researchers: Oleh Lushchak, Markus Schosserer, Johannes Grillari
Cellular senescence describes a stable cell cycle arrest state with a characteristic phenotype. Senescent cells accumulate in the human body during normal aging, limiting the lifespan and promoting aging-related, but also several non-related, pathologies. We propose to refer to all diseases whose pathogenesis or progression is associated with cellular senescence as “senopathies”. Targeting senescent cells with senolytics or senomorphics is likely to mitigate these pathologies. Examples of senopathies include cardiovascular, metabolic, musculoskeletal, liver, kidney, and lung diseases and neurodegeneration. For all these pathologies, animal studies provide clear mechanistic evidence for a connection between senescent cell accumulation and disease progression. The major persisting challenge in developing novel senotherapies is the heterogeneity of senescence phenotypes, causing a lack of universal biomarkers and difficulties in discriminating senescent from non-senescent cells.
References
- COVID-19 and cellular senescence.
- A new gene set identifies senescent cells and predicts senescence-associated pathways across tissues.
- Nanodelivery of phytobioactive compounds for treating aging-associated disorders.
Topic: Senolytics