Description

The number elderly population in first world countries has dramatically increased in the last few decades. In fact, improved life expectancy is one the great triumphs over this last century. However, this comes with a cost, as conditions associated with ageing, such as cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, are consequently increasing. It is therefore imperative to promote research that will improve our understanding of the mechanisms implicated in the maintenance of health across life. The primarily hallmark of ageing is the decline in the tissue homeostasis. However, the precise basic and cellular mechanisms and the need to identify biomarkers implicated in the ageing process are not well established, hindering the advances in understanding how healthy ageing happens.

As our previous work shows that the integrin alpha-v-beta-3 regulates senescence, we have developed an interest in understanding whether this integrin could be used as a biomarker of ageing. In fact, we have shown that the endogenous expression levels of alpha-v-beta-3 is increased in fibroblasts derived from old donors in comparison with fibroblasts from young donors. Our results were also confirmed in a subset of tissues derived from old mice when compared to young mice (Figure 1). We are next interested in investigating whether other integrins are also deregulated during ageing and if they play an active role in ageing (Cell Reports 2017, Cell Cycle 2017).

Figure 4. Integrin alpha-v- beta 3 enodgenous expression levels are increased during ageing.

Figure 4. Integrin alpha-v- beta 3 enodgenous expression levels are increased during ageing.