Scientists obsessed with aging are sketching a road map of how our bodies change as we grow old in the hopes that it will lead to treatments that could help us live longer, healthier lives.
They call this road map the “hallmarks of aging”—a set of biological features and mechanisms linked to our inexorable march toward death. Over the past decade, the hallmarks have helped guide the development of drugs that clear away cells that have stopped dividing and gene therapies that appear to restore cells to a more youthful state.
Scientists in Europe codified nine hallmarks in a 2013 paper in the journal Cell that is widely cited in the aging field. They include: shortening of telomeres (DNA segments at the ends of chromosomes); cell senescence, when cells stop dividing; and breakdowns in how cells regulate nutrients.
Dorian Therapeutics and Senolytic Therapeutics are developing drugs that eradicate or prevent the formation of senescent cells, another hallmark, to see if that slows aging and mitigates age-related diseases.
Other scientists are experimenting with drugs targeting a hallmark called nutrient-sensing pathways: sensors that cells use to recognize fuel sources such as sugars and proteins.
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The group behind the original hallmarks of aging suggested three more earlier this year based on subsequent research: chronic inflammation; imbalance in the microbiome, the community of microorganisms that live inside people; and defects in autophagy, a cell’s ability to recycle damaged parts of itself.
