Eliminating senescent cells in mice from mid-life delayed cancer onset by 30% and extended lifespan by 30% without changing cancer prevalence.

“this is what happened when we delete these cells that you said may cause aging”

“these mice from whom we eliminated senescent cells from mid life until death they had the same cancer prevalence so 85% of them died of lymphoma with and without senescence cells the difference is that when you eliminate the cells the animals from whom these cells were eliminated get cancer 30 percent later in their lives”

“if you genetically engineer a mouse that cannot make senescence cells this animal is born normally it's got ten fingers and ten toes but it is statistically winds up full of tumors before it's in reproductive age”

“essentially by a podcast you have to use a little bit of imagination so imagine two animals siblings born within seconds of each other from the same mom these are animals that are 24 months old so it's kind of equivalent to a 70 year old person and one of these litter mates is blind it's osteo product it's frail it has kidney dysfunction it has cardiac dysfunction it looks visibly old it's littermate from whom we eliminated senescence cells from midlife until it dies this animal lives on average about 30% longer which is cool but what's more awesome than that is that when this animal dies and when it's similarly treated animals die they die with many of the features of aging either absent or reduced”

“what we do is we insert into every cell of that animal's body we genetically engineer the animals so that we can administer a drug weekly which kills senescence cells within that animal but do you begin that administration at midlife”

“interestingly the animals don't live longer that particular mutant because it's so sick when you eliminate the cells but a whole bunch of the features of aging for example they're bent spines they're organ atrophy they're cataracts in their eyes these were all severely blunted when the senescence cells were eliminated”

“you added senescence cells through this mutation that gave rise to the production of less Babar one protein and then you eliminated those cells or a subset of those cells with this insert into the DNA of every cell of that animal and you could ameliorate a subset of the effects of senescence cells”

“there's a paper a famous paper by vanerson Kirkland and several other colleagues Darren Baker Baker are these the guys at Mayo I remember this they they've left two of them have left but yes uh they alleged that they could remove senescent cells by taking genetically modified mice giving them a drug all the ccent cells would go away and the mice lived longer”

“On the other hand, selective clearance of senescent cells increased lifespan by 36% & improved physical function in old age.”

“siness and cells are definitely accelerating the aging process and anything you can do to get rid of siness cell or prevent them uh is going to positively affect aging so foxo3 also activates genes that are involved in stem cell function”

“And the good news is, there are now mouse models. We don't know if this will work in humans, but in mice we can selectively cause senescent cells to die, so finally we can make them go away. And when we do that there are health benefits. I should point out, not necessarily an extension of lifespan but definitely an extension of health spans.”