Senescence

Senescence conference review. Last week I went to a conference of cellular senescence, a cellular state that occurs after too many replication cycles, but also due to an irreparable damage, think chemotherapy or radiation. Overall the conference was interesting, and there was a lot of talk about therapies and diagnostics for these cells in particular. The interest comes from a lot studies showing that the elimination of these cells extends animal lifespan, but also improves its 'healthspan' or how well it lives. These were all done in mice but a lot of people are now testing in humans. The major challenges are still, its hard to evaluate anti-aging clinical trials, because you can't monitor people over such a long time. 

But the conference wasn't weird because of that, it was more weird, because in a lot of ways people were just showing data that supported this hypothesis that removing senescent cells is good for an organism and therefore good for people so we need to do this. Only one person the entire time brought up a number of studies that are being done mostly outside of the field, showing the removal of senescent cells is not always good for the organism. 

This to me was really weird to see, I am not sure if those groups that showed this data weren't invited, or if they were didn't get a chance to talk. Either way its good to consider these things, especially in a field that wants to now make drugs for humans, if you don't you will figure it out in human studies, and thats not where you want the mistakes to be made.