"Zombie cells" that contribute to age-related diseases help heal damaged tissues, so wiping them out could come with major drawbacks, according to a new study.
According to the National Institute on Aging,escent cells are cells that don't die despite being damaged or stressed.
These cells release a lot of molecule that summon immune cells and cause inflammation. The cells accumulate and drive inflammation that contributes to diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease when the immune system becomes less efficient as you get older.
There are zombie cells that are not completely bad.
A new study shows that senescent cells help repair lung tissue after damage by encouraging stem cells to grow.
The researchers reported 13 October in the journal Science that killing these cells with a drug duo that's been studied as a potential treatment to combat aging and age related disease disrupted this repair.
The anti-aging vaccine works well in mice.
Tien Peng is an associate professor of pulmonary, critical care, allergy and sleep medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
In a study published in the journal Developmental Cell, zombie cells help mend wounds in the skin and can be disrupted by zombie-slaying drugs.
The drugs will have to be designed to block zombie cells' bad effects without disrupting their good ones because this suggests that using senolytics could come at a cost.
In order to find senescent cells in the lung, researchers genetically modified mice to carry a glowing protein on the gene that codes for the p16, which is often found in senescent cells.
The cell would start to glow when it switched on the genes.
The researchers used a technique to amplify this signal and reveal cells that may have otherwise escaped notice.
After birth, glowing cells appeared in the lungs of the mice.
The cells included fibroblasts, which make connective tissue, as well as immune cells, and resided within a sheet-like tissue that supports the lining of the lungs' air sacs, air tubes, and blood vessels.
The sheet allows oxygen to pass into the bloodstream while blocking harmful chemicals from entering the lungs.
The cells that carry p16 act as protectors.
After an injury, immune cells rush in to repair the damage and release a flurry of signals.
The immune cells increase in number, and the fibroblasts gush compounds that summon more immune cells.
The stem cell growth is prevented by the cutting off of this signaling cascade.
The skin cells were made 30 years younger.
Stem cell growth can be promoted by cells from human lungs.
Drugs like DQ could disrupt healing in humans.
An assistant professor of surgery at the Boston University School of Medicine who was not involved in the study said that scientists have been looking for signs that senolytics disrupt healing.
According to the new research, there is a need for caution.
While senolytics have been shown to mess with healing in the lungs and skin, some labs have found that the drugs speed up healing in broken bones. What's going on?
Is bone different from other parts of the body. One of the previous bone studies was overseen by the leader of the Osteoporosis and Bone Biology Laboratory. Another hypothesis is favored by Khosla.
The senolytics were given every day in the lung and skin studies, but there were longer breaks in the bone studies.
"Wherever there's enough inflammation for repair but not too much where you're actually starting to see negative effects is a therapeutic sweet spot for this strategy."
The devil is going to be in the dose.
The study raises questions about how zombie cells work.
Senescence is more like a dial than an on-off switch because zombie cells sit on a spectrum.
There are zombies in old mice that seem to be inflammatory.
There are related content.
The original article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
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