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Senolytics combat COVID-19 in aging

Nature Aging volume 3, pages 762–763 (2023)Cite this article

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Aging increases vulnerability to respiratory viral infections, including by SARS-CoV-2. Delval et al. established a causal role for age-related pre-existing senescent cells in the severity of COVID-19 symptoms in an aging hamster model. Selective depletion of senescent cells using senolytic agents mitigated the risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms linked to aging.

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Fig. 1: Senescent cells facilitate SARS-CoV-2 infection, whereas senolytic agents inhibit its progression.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support of the National Institutes of Health and National Institute on Aging for grants R56 AG068047 to Y.Z. We also thank the Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging at Mayo Clinic for a Career Development Award to X.Z. We thank X. Zhang for generating figure components.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

    Xu Zhang, Masayoshi Suda & Yi Zhu

  2. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

    Xu Zhang

  3. Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

    Masayoshi Suda & Yi Zhu

Authors
  1. Xu Zhang
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  2. Masayoshi Suda
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  3. Yi Zhu
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Correspondence to Yi Zhu.

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Zhang, X., Suda, M. & Zhu, Y. Senolytics combat COVID-19 in aging. Nat Aging 3, 762–763 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-023-00450-w

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