VIDEO: Cell senescence ‘most exciting’ potential development in osteoporosis
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DESTIN, Fla. — Cell senescence may represent the “most exciting” development in the potential treatment of osteoporosis, according to Michael R. McClung, MD, of Australian Catholic University and the Oregon Osteoporosis Center.
“The last new therapy we had in our field was romosozumab (Evenity, Amgen) in 2019,” McClung told Healio at the Congress of Clinical Rheumatology East. “There are no drugs currently in phase 2 or 3 clinical trials, but there is some exciting pre-clinical work done on drugs not specifically to target the bone, but drugs that deal with things more generally.”
Some of these potential pathways include altering the microbiome, which has been shown in animal studies to have substantial impacts on improving bone formation in older rodents, which may have an important role in the management of osteoporosis in older people, McClung said.
However, the most compelling update may be the recent emergence of senolytic drugs, and the current research on how removing older senescent cells can impact multiple parts of the body.
“Perhaps the most exciting new potential approach to treating osteoporosis is in the realm of cell senescence,” McClung said. “As cells age, they make secretory factors that are harmful for the skeleton, for muscle, for neurologic function, and there is now a category of drugs called senolytics, which remove old senescent cells and thereby remove the senescent cells’ secretory products, and a phase 2 trial is currently underway with a senolytic cocktail to evaluate its effects not only on osteoporosis but on other aspects of aging as well.”
He added: “So, in the meantime, as we’re awaiting new approaches to therapy with osteoporosis, we will work on optimizing the use and the sequences of our current therapies.”
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Healio Interview
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