Viel Tania, Chinta Shankar, Rane Anand, Chamoli Manish, Buck Hudson, Andersen Julie
Laboratory of Neuropharmacology of Aging, School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, Universidade de São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Touro University California, Vallejo, CA 94592, USA.
Aging (Albany NY). 2020 Jun 13;12(11):10035-10040. doi: 10.18632/aging.103449.
Cell senescence is a process that causes growth arrest and the release of a senescence associated secretory phenotype (SASP), characterized by secretion of chemokines, cytokines, cell growth factors and metalloproteases, leading to a tissue condition that may precipitate cancers and neurodegenerative processes. With the recent pandemic of coronavirus, senolytic drugs are being considered as possible therapeutic tools to reduce the virulence of SARS-CoV-2. In the last few years, our research group showed that lithium carbonate at microdose levels was able to stabilize memory and change neuropathological characteristics of Alzheimer's disease (AD). In the present work, we present evidence that low-dose lithium can reduce the SASP of human iPSCs-derived astrocytes following acute treatment, suggesting that microdose lithium could protect cells from senescence and development of aging-related conditions. With the present findings, a perspective of the potential use of low-dose lithium in old patients from the "high risk group" for COVID-19 (with hypertension, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is presented.
细胞衰老过程会导致生长停滞，并释放衰老相关分泌表型（SASP），其特征是趋化因子、细胞因子、细胞生长因子和金属蛋白酶的分泌，从而导致一种可能促使癌症和神经退行性病变发生的组织状态。随着近期冠状病毒大流行，衰老细胞溶解药物正被视为降低新型冠状病毒毒力的潜在治疗工具。在过去几年中，我们的研究小组表明，微剂量水平的碳酸锂能够稳定记忆并改变阿尔茨海默病（AD）的神经病理学特征。在本研究中，我们提供证据表明，急性处理后低剂量锂可降低人诱导多能干细胞来源的星形胶质细胞的SASP，这表明微剂量锂可保护细胞免于衰老及衰老相关病症的发展。基于目前的研究结果，本文提出了低剂量锂在来自“高危组”（患有高血压、糖尿病和慢性阻塞性肺疾病）老年患者中潜在应用的前景。
