A joint team from the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), the Mayo Clinic and others has found a new class of drugs that, tested in animals, significantly slows the aging process, alleviates signs of weakness, improves heart function and increase life expectancy. The scientists responsible for this advance have called these new drugs senolytics.
The study is a great first step in the race to develop safe treatments aimed at lengthening life expectancy, with better quality, and more effectively treating disorders and diseases derived from aging, according to TSRI Professor Paul Robbins, who led the research. together with Professor Laura Niedernhofer. For them, the clinical use of a combination of senolytic agents could transform age-related deterioration. Not only because they alleviate symptoms but because they could serve to delay, prevent or even reverse many chronic diseases and disabilities typical of old age .
Senile cells – those that have already stopped dividing – increase with age and accelerate the aging process. After seeing how the life expectancy in mice increased after killing these cells , scientists have seen an open door to the potential to reproduce this mechanism in humans.
The key to the question is knowing how to identify those cells and destroy them without causing harm to others. Among other things, they found that senile cells, like cancer cells, develop resistance to death by apoptosis or programmed cell death , and that they could find some clues to develop new drugs there.
To do this, they focused on two compounds: dasatinib – which kills senile cells – and quercetin, a natural compound that acts as an antihistamine and anti-inflammatory. Then they found that the combination of both was the most effective: in mice they improved cardiovascular functions and endurance, reduced osteoporosis and weakness, and improved life expectancy . And sometimes with just one treatment.
Although they warn that more evidence is needed to translate it to humans, the researchers believe it has great potential to prevent and treat aging .
