Publications by authors named "Darren Baker"

Cellular senescence is an aging mechanism characterized by cell cycle arrest and a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Preclinical studies demonstrate that senolytic drugs, which target survival pathways in senescent cells, can counteract age-associated conditions that span several organs. The comparative efficacy of distinct senolytic drugs for modifying aging and senescence biomarkers in vivo has not been demonstrated.

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  • Research highlights the significant role of immune processes in the development of Alzheimer's disease, which is the leading cause of dementia.
  • Various studies indicate that both innate and adaptive immune responses contribute to the disease's pathology and are influenced by genetics and lifestyle factors.
  • New therapeutic approaches targeting neuroinflammation are being explored in clinical settings, offering potential treatment options for Alzheimer's patients.
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Life stress can shorten lifespan and increase risk for aging-related diseases, but the biology underlying this phenomenon remains unclear. Here we assessed the effect of chronic stress on cellular senescence-a hallmark of aging. Exposure to restraint stress, a psychological non-social stress model, increased p21 exclusively in the brains of male, but not female mice, and in a p16-independent manner.

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  • Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a worsening brain condition without effective treatments, linked to the buildup of toxic β-amyloid peptides and amyloid plaques.
  • Previous studies have connected the insulin-like growth factor (IGF) system to AD, and reduced IGF-I receptor (IGFIR) signaling can alleviate plaque formation and neurodegeneration in mice.
  • Research highlighted that deleting PAPP-A, a protein involved in regulating IGF-I, in a mouse model of AD resulted in less plaque, improved brain function, and suggests that targeting PAPP-A could be a new treatment option for AD.
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  • HD-PTP (or PTPN23) plays a key role in the formation of multivesicular bodies by aiding endosomal sorting complexes, which is important for cellular transport.
  • Researchers created mice with reduced HD-PTP levels to study its physiological effects, discovering these mice displayed lipodystrophy and impaired signaling in white adipose tissue related to various pathways, including RAS/MAPK and PI3K/AKT.
  • The study found that while EGF binding was normal, there was reduced signaling activation due to changes in cholesterol distribution within cells, suggesting a crucial role for HD-PTP in both signaling regulation and maintaining fat tissue health.
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  • * New research tools are helping scientists study senescence more effectively, but identifying senescent cells remains challenging because of a lack of clear markers.
  • * The "minimum information for cellular senescence experimentation in vivo" (MICSE) guidelines offer a comprehensive resource on senescence markers in different organisms and types of tissues to enhance the study of senescent cells.
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  • Cellular senescence, once thought to only occur in tissue cultures, is now recognized as playing complex roles in various biological processes across multiple species, including humans.
  • Traditional understanding of senescent cells primarily comes from lab studies, but these cells are rare in actual tissues, and fully developed cells can also show signs of senescence.
  • The SenNet Biomarkers Working Group has created recommendations for identifying senescent cells in tissues, analyzing literature on markers in mice and humans, and discussing new methods for detection that will assist researchers in the field.
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Senescent cells, which accumulate with age, exhibit a pro-inflammatory senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) that includes the secretion of cytokines, lipids, and extracellular vesicles (EVs). Here, we established an in vitro model of senescence induced by Raf-1 oncogene in RAW 264.7 murine macrophages (MΦ) and compared them to senescent MΦ found in mouse lung tumors or primary macrophages treated with hydrogen peroxide.

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Background: Caloric restriction (CR) has been recognized for its benefits in delaying age-related diseases and extending lifespan. While its effects on amyloid pathology in Alzheimer's disease (AD) mouse models are well-documented, its effects on tauopathy, another hallmark of AD, are less explored.

Objective: To assess the impact of a short-term 30% CR regimen on age-dependent spatial learning deficits and pathological features in a tauopathy mouse model.

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Background: Cellular senescence has been associated with neurodegenerative disease and clearance of senescent cells using genetic or pharmaceutical strategies (senolytics) has demonstrated beneficial effects in mouse models investigating individual disease etiologies of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, it has remained unclear if senescent cell clearance in a mouse model exhibiting both plaque and tau pathologies modifies the disease state (3xTg).

Objective: To investigate the effects of senescent cell clearance in the 3xTg mouse model.

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High-grade gliomas are primary brain tumors that are incredibly refractory long-term to surgery and chemoradiation, with no proven durable salvage therapies for patients that have failed conventional treatments. Post-treatment, the latent glioma and its microenvironment are characterized by a senescent-like state of mitotic arrest and a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) induced by prior chemoradiation. Although senescence was once thought to be irreversible, recent evidence has demonstrated that cells may escape this state and re-enter the cell cycle, contributing to tumor recurrence.

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Objective: Despite advances toward understanding the etiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), it remains unclear which aspects of this disease are affected by environmental factors. Chronic life stress increases the risk of aging-related diseases including AD. The impact of stress on tauopathies remains understudied.

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  • Glioblastoma (GBM) is a severe brain tumor commonly found in older adults, often leading to poorer survival rates for patients aged 65 and older.
  • The research involved studying patient data and conducting experiments on mice to analyze the effects of age on tumor characteristics and treatment outcomes.
  • Findings indicated that older patients have worse survival rates, but combining senolytics (drugs targeting aging cells) with immunotherapy could enhance treatment effectiveness in older GBM patients.
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Background: The existence and contribution of microglia with senescent-like alterations in the pathogenesis of age-related neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been suggested in recent years. However, the identification of this distinct microglial population in vivo has proven challenging, largely due to overlaps in the inflammatory phenotype of activated and senescent microglia. Furthermore, attempts at recapitulating senescence in microglia in vitro are limited.

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Harnessing the immunogenic potential of senescent cells may be a viable but context-dependent opportunity to boost antitumor immunity.

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When Open Dialogue diversifies internationally as an approach to mental healthcare, so too do the research methodologies used to describe, explain and evaluate this alternative to existing psychiatric services. This article considers the contribution of anthropology and its core method of ethnography among these approaches. It reviews the methodological opportunities in mental health research opened up by anthropology, and specifically the detailed knowledge about clinical processes and institutional contexts.

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Senescent cells play relevant but context-dependent roles during tumorigenesis. Here, in an oncogenic Kras-driven lung cancer mouse model, we found that senescent cells, specifically alveolar macrophages, accumulate early in neoplasia. These macrophages have upregulated expression of p16 and Cxcr1, are distinct from previously defined subsets and are sensitive to senolytic interventions, and suppress cytotoxic T cell responses.

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Accumulation of senescent cells and compositional changes in gut microbiota have been independently reported to occur as a function of age. A study now suggests that these two seemingly disparate processes are more intimately linked than previously appreciated via a B-cell-IgA-microbiota axis.

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PTEN is a multifaceted tumor suppressor that is highly sensitive to alterations in expression or function. The PTEN C-tail domain, which is rich in phosphorylation sites, has been implicated in PTEN stability, localization, catalytic activity, and protein interactions, but its role in tumorigenesis remains unclear. To address this, we utilized several mouse strains with nonlethal C-tail mutations.

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Cellular senescence is a state of permanent growth arrest that plays an important role in wound healing, tissue fibrosis, and tumor suppression. Despite senescent cells' (SnCs) pathological role and therapeutic interest, their phenotype in vivo remains poorly defined. Here, we developed an in vivo-derived senescence signature (SenSig) using a foreign body response-driven fibrosis model in a p16-CreER;Ai14 reporter mouse.

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The contribution of cellular senescence to a diverse range of biological processes, including normal physiology, ageing, and pathology were long overlooked but have now taken centre stage. In this Editorial, we will briefly outline the review and original work articles contained in The FEBS Journal's Special Issue on Senescence in Ageing and Disease. It is beginning to be appreciated that senescent cells can exert both beneficial and adverse effects following tissue injury.

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  • * Expert endocrinologists reviewed thyroid event cases and found that the majority were autoimmune conditions, with 39.5% diagnosed as Graves' disease.
  • * Despite the high incidence of thyroid issues, these events were manageable and did not impact the progression of multiple sclerosis in patients.
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For the past two decades, BTK a tyrosine kinase and member of the Tec family has been a drug target of significant interest due to its potential to selectively treat various B cell-mediated diseases such as CLL, MCL, RA, and MS. Owning to the challenges encountered in identifying drug candidates exhibiting the potency block B cell activation via BTK inhibition, the pharmaceutical industry has relied on the use of covalent/irreversible inhibitors to address this unmet medical need. Herein, we describe a medicinal chemistry campaign to identify structurally diverse reversible BTK inhibitors originating from HITS identified using a fragment base screen.

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Recent work has established associations between elevated p21, the accumulation of senescent cells, and skeletal muscle dysfunction in mice and humans. Using a mouse model of p21 overexpression (p21OE), we examined if p21 mechanistically contributes to cellular senescence and pathological features in skeletal muscle. We show that p21 induces several core properties of cellular senescence in skeletal muscle, including an altered transcriptome, DNA damage, mitochondrial dysfunction, and the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP).

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People with HIV on combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) have longer life expectancy and are increasingly experiencing age-related comorbidities. Thus, aging with HIV has become a central issue in clinical care and research, which has been particularly challenging with the intersection of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID)-19 pandemic. Since 2009, the International Workshop on HIV and Aging has served as a multidisciplinary platform to share research findings from cross-disciplinary fields along with community advocates to address critical issues in HIV and aging.

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