Senescent Cardiomyocytes Increase the Damage Following a Heart Attack
If a heart attack is survived, it leads to long-term damage to heart tissue. Scarring, detrimental remodeling of heart muscle, and other dysfunctions result. Researchers here show that a raised burden of cellular senescence in cardiomyocytes specifically predisposes the aged heart to greater harm following a heart attack. This well illustrates that periodic senolytic treatments or related strategies that can minimize the presence of senescent cells in aged tissues are highly desirable. The presence of lingering senescent cells is harmful in many ways, directly causing organs to become less functional and more vulnerable.
Myocardial infarction is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. While reperfusion is now standard therapy, pathological remodelling leading to heart failure remains a clinical problem. Cellular senescence has been shown to contribute to disease pathophysiology and treatment with the senolytic navitoclax attenuates inflammation, reduces adverse myocardial remodelling and results in improved functional recovery. However, it remains unclear which senescent cell populations contribute to these processes.
To identify whether senescent cardiomyocytes contribute to disease pathophysiology post-myocardial infarction, we established a transgenic mouse model in which p16 (CDKN2A) expression was specifically knocked-out in the cardiomyocyte population. Following myocardial infarction, mice lacking cardiomyocyte p16 expression demonstrated no difference in cardiomyocyte hypertrophy but exhibited improved cardiac function and significantly reduced scar size in comparison to control animals. This data demonstrates that senescent cardiomyocytes participate in pathological myocardial remodelling.
Importantly, inhibition of cardiomyocyte senescence led to reduced senescence-associated inflammation and decreased senescence-associated markers within other myocardial lineages, consistent with the hypothesis that cardiomyocytes promote pathological remodelling by spreading senescence to other cell-types. Collectively this study presents the demonstration that senescent cardiomyocytes are major contributors to myocardial remodelling and dysfunction following a myocardial infarction. Therefore, to maximise the potential for clinical translation, it is important to further understand the mechanisms underlying cardiomyocyte senescence and how to optimise senolytic strategies to target this cell lineage.