A Senotherapeutic Approach to Neurodegenerative Disease

Funded by SENISCA, PhD student Jodie is exploring their portfolio of senotherapeutics as a potential therapeutic intervention for neurodegenerative diseases.

Previously, Team RNA have shown that senotherapeutics (a drug which targets senescent cells) have huge potential in the world of ageing research. This led to the creation of spin out company, SENISCA, who currently specialise in rejuvenation, with current projects focusing on skin and lung related diseases. In November 2023, Jodie begun her PhD with Team RNA and SENISCA, hoping to help branch the company into a new direction: neurodegenerative diseases.

This project has three main objectives:

1)      Characterising senescence in Primary Human Astrocytes

2)      Developing disease specific models, from simple in vitro to complex in vivo, to evaluate Senotherapeutic effects

3)      Assessing selected target genes involvement in motor and sensory function in an invertebrate model

With this study, we hope we will characterise the senescence phenotypes in astrocytes at both the molecular and transcriptomic level and define a high throughput algorithm for classification of senescent cells. It will also determine whether any of SENISCA’s existing Senotherapeutic portfolio have promise in a neurological setting as well as identifying and evaluating novel targets for assessment in an in vitro and in vivo setting. Jodie will be designing and creating various complexities of new neurodegenerative disease-specific models, which could help towards bridging the gaps in the therapeutic development timeline.