First-in-human trial of senolytic drugs encouraging
Small pilot study points to feasibility of larger trials in age-related diseases
UT Health San Antonio researchers, collaborating with the Mayo Clinic and the Wake Forest School of Medicine, are the first to publish results on the treatment of a deadly age-related disease in human patients with drugs called senolytics. The findings were posted Jan. 4 by the journal EBioMedicine, which is published by The Lancet.
Senolytics target cellular senescence, a process in which damaged cells, rather than dying, persist and become toxic to cells around them. Cellular senescence has been shown to drive multiple age-related diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a chronic, irreversible and progressive disease that results in scarring of the lungs. In animal studies, run by Mayo Clinic collaborators James Kirkland, M.D., Ph.D.; Nathan LeBrasseur, Ph.D., M.S., and Tamara Tchkonia, Ph.D., senolytics selectively cleared these toxic cells in mice that model IPF. …..read more