The Inflammatory Feedback Loop Produced by Senescent Cells in the Aging Heart
Senescent cells are an important cause of degenerative aging. Lingering senescent cells accumulate over time and disrupt tissue function and immune function via their secretions. An insidious part of this is that the signals secreted by senescent cells cause other nearby cells to be more likely to become senescent. Thus once they start to accumulate the result is an accelerating feedback loop of dysfunction and degeneration. There are many such feedback loops in aging, which is why the process starts slow and then speeds up considerably in later life.
Aging is a major risk factor in the development of chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases. Age-related organ dysfunction is strongly associated with the accumulation of senescent cells. Cardiac mesenchymal stromal cells (cMSCs), deemed part of the microenvironment, modulate cardiac homeostasis through their vascular differentiation potential and paracrine activity. Transcriptomic analysis of cMSCs identified age-dependent biological pathways regulating immune responses and angiogenesis. Aged cMSCs displayed a senescence program characterized by Cdkn2a expression, decreased proliferation and clonogenicity, and acquisition of a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP).
Increased CCR2-dependent monocyte recruitment by aged cMSCs was associated with increased IL-1ß production by inflammatory macrophages in the aging heart. In turn, IL-1ß induced senescence in cMSCs and mimicked age-related phenotypic changes such as decreased CD90 expression. The CD90+ and CD90- cMSC subsets had biased vascular differentiation potentials, and CD90+ cMSCs were more prone to acquire markers of the endothelial lineage with aging. These features were related to the emergence of a new cMSC subset in the aging heart, expressing CD31 and endothelial genes.
These results demonstrate that cMSC senescence and SASP production are supported by the installation of an inflammatory amplification loop, which could sustain cMSC senescence and interfere with their vascular differentiation potentials.