Cellular senescence as a therapeutic target
Jesús Gil
Imperial College London, UK
Senescent cells are present in cancerous and fibrotic tissues and are associated with multiple age-related diseases. Recently, drugs that selectively kill senescent cells, termed senolytics, have proven beneficial in improving the outcomes of many of these pathologies. While the potential of senotherapies is great, there are several limitations to translating them to the clinic. In particular, we need to understand better the complex biology of senescence, and identify effective senolytics and ways to detect senescent cells. I will describe functional approaches that my lab has employed to identify senotherapies and how we can take advantage of machine learning to detect senescence.