Cellular senescence in aging and disease (Dr. Marco Demaria)

Dr. Marco Demaria is an Associate Professor in Cellular Ageing at the Medical Faculty of the University of Groningen. In 2018, he co-founded a start-up company, Cleara Biotech, devoted to developing anti-senescence drugs. Today, Dr. Demaria shares his insights and research on how senescence promotes aging and factors that promote the creation of senescent cells.

In this episode, Dr. Demaria explains what cellular senescence means and discusses the good and bad that comes with having senescent cells in the body. He explains the role of senolytics in combating senescent cells and how senescent cells could be the cause of the severity of COVID in older people.

In this episode, you’ll learn how senescent cells contribute to aging, the evolution of the senescent field, some current studies in the field, and what Dr. Demaria hopes to see in the field in years to come.

Episode Highlights:

• What is cellular senescence?
• The positive and negative sides of senescent cells
• The role of senescent cells in aging
• What is the heterogeneity of senescence?
• Using senolytic drugs to eliminate senescent cells
• How does hypoxia affect senescent cells?
• The relation between senescence and COVID in the elderly
• Dr. Demaria’s progress in his study and work at Cleara Biotech
• The evolution of the senescence field in the past 12 years
• Experiments Dr. Demaria would like to see done

Quotes:

“A cell that is in an early senescence state seems to be different from a senescence cell in a late state.”

“The next generation of senolytic drugs should definitely focus on dissecting the targets that they want to reach, because of the potential side effect of administering a general senolytic that could interfere with beneficial senescence.”

“What we call senolytic drugs and compounds are mostly repurposed drugs.”

“We also want to make this study of stem cell longevity in mice and in mouse tissues, because we think that might be another mechanism by which we can improve health, which is maintaining the stem cell pool because we retard the aging of the stem cells.”

“There are two prominent senescence groups that are now using senolytics in the clinic for COVID-19 patients.”

“There is no magic bullet so far that we have found but just because we haven't probably combined the right interventions at the right moment in the right context.”

“The experiments I would like to see done are to combine approaches that target different aspects of aging.”

Links:

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Cleara Biotech Website