Fight Aging!

Here researchers discuss the influence of the hallmarks of aging paper, and its later expansions, on the field of aging research. You might read it at the same time as an earlier critique, and a related argument for greater consideration of cause and consequence. The hallmarks were never intended to be a list of causative mechanisms of aging, a list of mechanisms to target for intervention, but some of the hallmarks are indeed important causative mechanisms, and thus perhaps too many people take the whole list that way. The true list of proposed causes and points of intervention is the original Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) proposal, predating the hallmarks of aging by a decade.

The Hallmarks of Aging arose as an answer to the great amount of information generated by aging research, with the aim of creating a conceptual framework to integrate and organize the existing knowledge. The objective of the present review has been to determine the impact of the Hallmarks and address if the purpose that gave them rise was achieved. For that aim, we reviewed the literature that cited any of the two versions of the Hallmarks. The conclusion was that the first version (with the second one also following the same trend) accomplished the goal, as it influenced a vast variety of fields ranging from the different areas of aging research to other related fields. Furthermore, it also inspired other authors and served as a model for the organization of knowledge, giving rise to a wide variety of "Hallmarks" in other subjects.

Nevertheless, this impact was not unidirectional, since the research promoted by the first version of the Hallmarks generated a great deal of knowledge that gave rise to the updates included in the second version. This updated version included three new hallmarks and, in spite of its recent publication, it is being highly cited and has already influenced some studies and served as a knowledge-structuring model. Therefore, it can be concluded that the usefulness of The Hallmarks of Aging in aging-related research seems undeniable.

However, as any approximation it has its limitations and it should be carefully revised, considering the latest advances, to determine whether all the hallmarks are still valid and if it is necessary to include new ones. In this sense, this review has analyzed the possible emerging hallmarks that were not included in the second version and the ones that were included but as components of other hallmarks. Assuming that a conceptual framework must be as schematic and organized as possible and the still limited evidence supporting some of these candidate hallmarks, we conclude that further investigations are needed to assess if any of these proposed hallmarks should be included in the next version. Even though the current Hallmarks of Aging provide a valid scaffold for aging research, there is no doubt that, as knowledge advances, updated versions of the Hallmarks will become necessary.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2024.1334261