(ISSN 2638-1311)
OBM Geriatrics is an international peer-reviewed Open Access journal published quarterly online by LIDSEN Publishing Inc. The journal takes the premise that innovative approaches – including gene therapy, cell therapy, and epigenetic modulation – will result in clinical interventions that alter the fundamental pathology and the clinical course of age-related human diseases. We will give strong preference to papers that emphasize an alteration (or a potential alteration) in the fundamental disease course of Alzheimer’s disease, vascular aging diseases, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, skin aging, immune senescence, and other age-related diseases.
Geriatric medicine is now entering a unique point in history, where the focus will no longer be on palliative, ameliorative, or social aspects of care for age-related disease, but will be capable of stopping, preventing, and reversing major disease constellations that have heretofore been entirely resistant to interventions based on “small molecular” pharmacological approaches. With the changing emphasis from genetic to epigenetic understandings of pathology (including telomere biology), with the use of gene delivery systems (including viral delivery systems), and with the use of cell-based therapies (including stem cell therapies), a fatalistic view of age-related disease is no longer a reasonable clinical default nor an appropriate clinical research paradigm.
Precedence will be given to papers describing fundamental interventions, including interventions that affect cell senescence, patterns of gene expression, telomere biology, stem cell biology, and other innovative, 21st century interventions, especially if the focus is on clinical applications, ongoing clinical trials, or animal trials preparatory to phase 1 human clinical trials.
Papers must be clear and concise, but detailed data is strongly encouraged. The journal publishes a variety of article types (Original Research, Review, Communication, Opinion, Comment, Conference Report, Technical Note, Book Review, etc.). There is no restriction on the length of the papers and we encourage scientists to publish their results in as much detail as possible.
Publication Speed (median values for papers published in 2023): Submission to First Decision: 5.7 weeks; Submission to Acceptance: 17.9 weeks; Acceptance to Publication: 7 days (1-2 days of FREE language polishing included)
Special Issue
Recent Breakthroughs in Ageing Research: Senolytic Drugs to Fight Senescent Cells as an Anti-ageing Strategy
Submission Deadline: April 15, 2025 (Open) Submit Now
Guest Editor
Calogero Caruso, MD, Professor
Laboratory of Immunopathology and Immunosenescence, Department of Biomedicine, Neuroscience and Advanced Diagnostics, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
Research Interests: Aging; Diseases related to age and longevity, immunosenescence and immunopathology
About This Topic
This special issue of OBM Geriatrics will explore one of the latest scientific researches in the field of ageing, namely, the role of senolytic treatment in fighting the ageing process.
Cellular senescence, a process characterized by irreversible cell cycle arrest with peculiar secretory characteristics, macromolecular damage, and impaired metabolism, is implicated in ageing and is associated with a broad spectrum of age-related diseases. Cellular senescence can be triggered by several stress signals to the cell, including DNA damage, telomere shortening, oncogene activation or loss of tumor suppressive functions, mitochondrial dysfunction, nutrient deprivation, hypoxia, and epigenetic changes. The impaired mitochondrial function is responsible for the elevated production of reactive oxygen species, which in turn can drive the activation of NF-kB, thus inducing the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). SASP is a hallmark of senescence and mediates many of its pathophysiological effects. Senescent cells secrete bioactive molecules, particularly pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines that contribute to inflamm-ageing associated with age-related diseases, frailty, and mortality in older people. Senescent cells accumulate with age in multiple tissues and can cause functional decline of the organism. Senescence also affects the immune system. A mouse model with selective deletion of a DNA damage repair protein in hematopoietic cells has been created to induce senescence only in the immune system. Surprisingly, the non-lymphoid organs of these mice also showed increased markers of senescence, suggesting that a senescent immune system has a causal role in driving organismal ageing.
So, it is not surprising that increasing efforts have been devoted identifying drugs that specifically target senescent cells by inducing apoptosis, drugs that have been named senolytics. Natural or synthetic compounds with senolytic activity, i.e., the ability to selectively remove senescent cells by inducing apoptosis, and immunotherapies using immune cell-mediated clearance of senescent cells are currently the most promising strategies to fight ageing and age-related diseases. Indeed, pharmacological strategies aimed to reverse cellular senescence and SASP are hot topics in the framework of anti-ageing strategy. Several drugs that target gene products that protect senescent cells from apoptosis have been tested for their ability to eliminate senescent cells in vitro. Moreover, it has been reported that chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells can be redirected to target senescent cells in animal models. CAR T cells that specifically target senescent cells could be a further senolytic treatment strategy for senescence-associated diseases. This special issue will feature the most recent research on the efficacy of many senolytic treatments, particularly drugs of botanical origin, in eliminating senescent cells. This special issue will welcome both original papers and reviews on whether and which treatments can effectively delay, prevent and/or reverse aging. may involve in vitro and in vivo studies in different cells and organisms.
Keywords:
Cellular senescence; SASP; Senolytic drugs
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted through the LIDSEN Submission System. Detailed information on manuscript preparation and submission is available in the Instructions for Authors. All submitted articles will be thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process and will be processed following the Editorial Process and Quality Control policy. Upon acceptance, the article will be immediately published in a regular issue of the journal and will be listed together on the special issue website, with a label that the article belongs to the Special Issue. LIDSEN distributes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) License in an open-access model. The authors own the copyright to the article, and the article can be free to access, distribute, and reuse provided that the original work is correctly cited.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). Research articles and review articles are highly invited. Authors are encouraged to send the tentative title and abstract of the planned paper to the Editorial Office (geriatrics@lidsen.com) for record. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office.
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Vidhi is a Clinical yoga therapist; mentor for yoga therapy training in Krishnamacharya tradition. She holds a MSc in Public health from Kings College London.
Mirela Olympia Fagarasan Palmer
Luigi Fontana, MD, PhD.jpg)
Zhong-Ting (Justin) is a PhD student from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He holds BSc in Applied Chemistry and MSc in Environmental Engineering. He was a R&D researcher of NanoMaterials Technology Pte Ltd in Singapore (2006-2012). His current research interests are functional nanomaterials synthesis & design, and their application into environmental/chemical engineering. He has published near 60 SCI papers in Applied Catalysis B, Chemical Engineering Journal and so on with H-Index 23. He also serviced as reviewers over 40 Journals such as Appl. Catal. B, Water Research, Chem. Eng. J, ACS Applied Materials & Interface, etc. He was honored such as “The Bsic Research Achievment 1st Award of CIESC”, “The ZJUT Fund Breeding Distinguished Young Scholars” etc.
Rolf Teschke studied Medicine in Munich and Marburg, where he finished his MD thesis before starting a residency at the Department of Pathology, University of Marburg. Subsequently and with a fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgmeinschaft, he worked at the Bronx VA Hospital/Mount Sinai Hospital in New York during 1972–1975 together with Professor Charles S. Lieber and successfully isolated MEOS and expanded its characterization. Back in Germany, he was at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf with a focus on alcoholic liver disease, biochemical drug studies, and clinical intoxications by halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbons, where he became a Professor of Medicine. In 1987, he was offered a chief position and appointed as Director of the Medical Department II, City Hospital Hanau, Teaching Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. His clinical and research interests are on liver injury by drugs and herbs including causality assessment by RUCAM in close association with Dr. Gaby Danan in Paris. A perfect cooperation exists also with Professor Tran Dang Xuan of the University of Hiroshima, Japan. Finally, he is the author of more than 275 publications including books and book chapters, and he is editor in chief of scientific journals and member of editorial boards.