AP: Richard Soller, 95, runs on a makeshift track in his unfinished basement, surrounded by crates of track and field and long-distance trophies.
“I can run miles down here,” he says without pausing.
A leather chair he acquired after retiring from Procter & Gamble sits nearby. He’s too busy practising for the National Senior Games to utilise it.
Soller, from Cincinnati, has reached a great goal: he is fit and active even though he is old.
Growing old is generally linked with frailty and illness since so few achieve it. Scientists are seeking to reverse that through cellular senescence, a little-known branch of studstudy of ageingageing study.
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In reaction to injury, cells stop dividing and enter a “senescent” condition. Most are eliminated. Others are zombie-like. Not dead. Mayo Clinic’s Nathan LeBrasseur compares them to rotten fruit in a fruit bowl. Increasing evidence links them to dementia, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis in elderly bodies.
Can zombie cell growth be stopped?
According to LeBrasseur, the ability to intervene in the core biology of ageing offers the greatest opportunity to improve human health.Increasing healthy years benefits quality of life, public health, and socioeconomics.
Viviana Perez Montes of the National Institutes of Health calls cellular senescence a “hot issue.” Since 1985, there have been 11,500 initiatives addressing cellular senescence, with many more in recent years.
100 firms and university teams are researching senescent cell medicines. And research suggests that people may be able to regulate senescence themselves by exercising.
Christopher Wiley, a researcher at Tufts University, wants to help people less like his late grandfather, who had Alzheimer’s and looked at him like he was a stranger.
Wiley doesn’t want the Fountain of Youth. “I’m seeking the spring of youth,”
Leonard Hayflick, who discovered cellular senescence in 1960, is 94. He teaches anatomy at UCSF and writes, presents, and speaks on the issue.
At his Sonoma County home, he reads two early works that have been referenced dozens of times. His landmark book “How and Why We Age” is in many languages on his living room table.
This scientific fame was hard-won. He discovered cellular senescence by accident while culturing human foetal cells for a cancer biology study. Cell cultures typically fail due to contamination. Others ceased splitting at the same point. “The Hayflick limit” was later coined.
According to Hayflick, the study called into question the “60-year-old assumption” that human cells could multiply indefinitely.Hayflick underwent a decade of derision when a paper he co-wrote with Paul Moorhead was released in 1961.
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“It followed the traditional pattern of big scientific discoveries, where the discoverer gets mocked and then someone admits, ‘Well, maybe it works.'” It’s accepted partially, then generally.
“The field I uncovered has surged beyond my capacity to keep up,” he adds.
BUILDUP ZOMBIES
Cell senescence can be beneficial, say scientists. It probably evolved to inhibit cell division to prevent cancer. DNA damage and telomere shortening, which cap and protect chromosomal ends, induce it throughout our lifetimes. Wound healing, embryonic development, and birthing include senescent cells.
Buildup can cause problems.
Perez, who researches cell biology and ageing, believes young people’s immune systems can eradicate senescent cells. As we age, our immune system’s activity decreases, reducing our ability to eradicate them.
Senescent cells resist apoptosis and become massive, flat, and have expanded nuclei. LeBrasseur says that the chemicals they give off can cause inflammation, hurt other cells, and, ironically, cause cancer.
Some diseases are linked to senescent cell buildups. Certain senescent cells that develop in cigarette-smoked lungs may contribute to COPD airway inflammation.
Many experts believe that one pathway might cause multiple illnesses.
Dr. James Kirkland left geriatrics because of it. Kirkland, a Mayo Clinic professor and pioneer of the ageing revolution, was tired of recommending improved wheelchairs and incontinence equipment. “I wanted to accomplish something essential to reduce misery.”
He and others create remedies.
Mayo has patents on “senolytics,” experimental medications that remove senescent cells. In mice, they postpone, prevent, or ease age-related diseases.
emerging advantages for people. Kirkland, LeBrasseur, and their colleagues did a small study that showed mixing chemotherapy with a plant pigment might help people with lung disease.The identical mixture suppressed senescent cells in diabetic renal disease patients’ adipose tissue.
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At least 12 clinical trials are looking into the effects of senolytics on Alzheimer’s, osteoarthritis, and bone health.Some teams are developing “senomorphics” to inhibit senescent cell molecules. A Japanese team tried a vaccination that targets senescent cells by targeting their protein.
Scientists claim improving human health might reduce wrinkles.
Judith Campisi, a biogerontology expert at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, says, “If we develop a medicine that clears the harmful senescent cells and not the healthy ones, we could treat Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, and macular degeneration.” If we can cure wrinkles, we’ll be affluent, and I won’t need another grant.
Some supplements are marketed as senolytics. They haven’t been demonstrated as safe or effective, say experts.
Clinical trial medications have much to teach.
Wiley claims senolytics work in mice. “We’re still learning people’s basics.”
LeBrasseur, who leads a Mayo ageing centre, believes exercise is “the most promising instrument” for optimal late-life functioning. Its influence extends to our cells.
Research shows that it helps the immune system get rid of senescent cells and stops molecular damage that could cause senescence.
LeBrasseur’s work showed for the first time in people that exercise can lower bloodstream indications of senescent cell load. After 12 weeks of aerobics, resistance, and balance training, older persons had higher muscular strength, physical function, and reported health. A recent analysis finds further evidence in animals and people that exercise targets ageing.
Many older people intuitively associate exercise with youth, despite the fact that such studies are not widely recognized.
Rancher Mike Gale, 81, created a track and field throwing circle on his Petaluma, California, farm so he and pals could train. They twist, stride, toss, and retrieve against green slopes.
Gale wants to compete in his 90s. Why?
Soller once asked himself the same thing.
After a strained hamstring prohibited him from running track in high school, he started smoking two packs a day. When daughter Mary was born, he and wife Jean quit “cold turkey.”
He began running again before the age of 50 and has competed in races across the United States for decades, including two marathons and Senior Games.Soller was one of 12,000 people who went to the national games in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he won five medals to add to his collection of 1,500.
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His daughter cheered “Go, Dad, go!” as she videotaped his 200-meter win.
Soller believes exercising keeps him healthy to tackle everything, including his wife’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. They walk hand-in-hand across neighbourhoods.
“Do everything,” he says. “That’s how to keep healthy”