Anti-ageing jabs – they can rejuvenate mice, but will they work on humans?

Children’s research hospital in Memphis , Tennessee , is leading a clinical trial of 50-60 childhood cancer survivors with signs of frailty, along with blood-based markers that indicate a significant amount of senescence.

Aged about 40 , on average, the participants will receive oral doses of either dasatinib and quercetin , or fisetin.

These individuals will then be tracked every five years to assess whether this treatment can help extend their life expectancy.

Senescent cells are a common denominator in every age-associated disease that has ever been looked at: cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, musculoskeletal diseases, lung fibrosis, chronic kidney disease, you name it.

Senolytics are now starting to reach humans.

Clinical trials are under way to see whether dasatinib and quercetin can modulate disease progression in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, while this same combination has previously been shown to alleviate some physical dysfunction in people with chronic lung disease.

Minamino is now hoping to develop this as an RNA-style vaccine, similar to the Covid jab, which trains the immune system to remove inflammatory senescent cells.

It could be used in patients with Alzheimer’s, chronic lung disease or frailty.

But researchers caution that senolytics are still only one piece of the ageing puzzle.