How long could we extend the human lifespan if geriatric problems like diabetes and heart disease were a thing of the past? Riding a wave of growing interest in longevity research, scientists in Japan recently developed a vaccine that targets the body’s senescent cells — aging cells that no longer divide but can still cause chronic inflammation and disease as they accumulate in our tissues.
“Most age-related diseases involve the accumulation of senescent cells,” says Tohru Minamino, professor and chairman of cardiovascular biology and medicine at Juntendo University in Tokyo and lead author of the study, published in Nature Aging in December. If senescent cells accumulate in blood vessels, he explains, they cause arteriosclerosis; in the heart, they cause heart failure; and in abdominal fat, they cause diabetes.
