The first issue of the Implen NanoPhotometer Journal Club - Immunology edition is covering a novel approach to treating a wide range of diseases that have been shown to be influenced by the accumulation of senescent (an irreversible proliferation arrest) cells including fibrosis, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other age-related pathologies. Consistent with this, clearance of senescent cells can prolong healthspan and lifespan in in vivo models. This provided a rationale for developing a new class of drugs, called senolytics, designed to selectively eliminate senescent cells in human tissues.
The senolytics tested so far lack specificity and have significant off-target effects, suggesting that a targeted approach could be more clinically relevant. Poblocka et. al. recently published in Nature Scientific Reports that a senolytic antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) against B2M, a recently identified membrane marker of senescence, as a target for the specific delivery of toxic drugs into senescent cells, was able to selectively kill senescent cells with no toxicity to proliferating cells, demonstrating the feasibility of antibody-based targeted senolytics and suggests a new avenue for development tools that could be readily used for a wide range of therapeutic applications, which could have clinical applications in pathological aging and associated diseases.
The NanoPhotometer® P300 was used in this study to measure the concentration and purity of extracted RNA.
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