Speaking at the Longevity Leaders conference earlier this year, King’s College London Professor Georgina Ellison-Hughes shared a fascinating insight into her work to establish the adult heart as a self-renewing organ with regenerative capacity.
Longevity. Technology: The heart is generally considered a “post-mitotic” organ, or one without regenerative capacity. As we age and encounter chronic disease, senescent cells accumulate in the heart, just as they do in other tissues and organs. Ellison-Hughes’ work has shown that cellular senescence may impact the efficacy of regenerative therapies, and that senolytics have the potential to rejuvenate the heart’s capacity to regenerate. We caught up with the professor to learn more.
Cellular senescence is one of the nine hallmarks of aging. It occurs when our cells stop reproducing and enter a zombie state where they refuse to die – hanging around and causing problems throughout our bodies. Ellison-Hughes is professor of regenerative muscle physiology at King’s and in 2019 was co-author of a study in Aging Cell, which found that senescent cells impaired regeneration in the human heart.
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