Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESETageing (RESEarch for healThy AGEING)
Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2022-03-31
To reduce these gaps in healthy life expectancy, interventions that increase healthy ageing are needed and probably are the most promising potential to relieve individual suffering as well as the enormous strain on public finances.
RESETageing project aims at enhancing the scientific and innovation competences of University of Coimbra (UC), Portugal, a low-performing partner, in the area of cardiovascular ageing, with three high performing partners, University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UNEW), United Kingdom (ageing biology), the University of Maastricht (UM), Netherlands (cardiovascular biology) and the Leibniz Institute on Aging– Fritz Lipmann Institute (LIA), Germany (omics).
The objectives of RESETageing project are to stimulate the excellency in research, training and value creation in the area of ageing.
- Identification of senolytic and senostatic drugs by high-throughput screenings using aged cardiac and vascular tissues as platforms;
- Identification of cellular targets for senescence elimination and use of nanoformulations for the release of anti-senescence drugs;
- demonstration of the key role of dysfunctional mitophagy as a driver of the senescence phenotypes
- demonstration of some mechanisms in the communication between senescent cells and proliferative cells.
Our data indicate that the loss of mitophagy is sufficient to trigger cellular senescence, therefore activation of mitophagy is required for the anti-senescence effect of pharmacological interventions.
EVs play a major role in cardiac communication, representing an essential mechanism to maintain heart homeostasis.