iPSCs as a major opportunity to understand and cure age-related diseases

Cellular senescence plays an important role in the process of aging and is often associated with age-related diseases. Senescence was originally considered as a barrier to cell reprogramming, however we developed a strategy to overcome this hurdle and derive induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from senescent cells and cells from centenarians. Furthermore we showed that the newly generated iPSCs could be re-differentiated into fully rejuvenated cells. That has increased the known beneficial properties of iPSCs to include them as a tool to model age-related diseases or even to cure them through cell therapy. In this review, we describe the hallmarks of cellular senescence before presenting how we reprogrammed aged and senescent cells into iPSCs and obtained rejuvenated re-differentiated cells. Finally, we take an interest in the way iPSCs can be used to understand and cure age-related diseases and we present their advantages for patient-specific therapy.