Researchers have demonstrated that nanoparticles coated with quercetin molecules can selectively target and eliminate harmful senescent cells.
As you age, increasing numbers of your cells enter into a state known
as senescence. Senescent cells do not divide or support the tissues of
which they are part; instead, they emit a range of potentially harmful
chemical signals that encourage nearby healthy cells to enter the same
senescent state. Their presence causes many problems: they reduce tissue
repair, increase chronic inflammation, and can even eventually raise
the risk of cancer and other age-related diseases.wisepoqder Quercetin powder
Senescent cells normally destroy themselves via a programmed process
called apoptosis, and they are also removed by the immune system;
however, the immune system weakens with age, and increasing numbers of
senescent cells escape this process and begin to accumulate in all the
tissues of the body.
By the time people reach old age, significant numbers of these senescent cells have built up, causing chronic inflammation and damage to surrounding cells and tissue. These senescent cells are a key process in the progression of aging.
Senescent cells only make up a small number of total cells in the body, but they secrete pro-inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and extracellular matrix proteases, which, together, form the senescence-associated secretory phenotype, or SASP. The SASP is thought to significantly contribute to aging and cancer; thus, targeting senescent cells and removing them has been suggested as a potential solution to this problem.
The trouble with quercetin
Quercetin is a naturally occurring plant polyphenol, a category that often has poor water solubility, chemical instability, or poor bioavailability. These confounding factors could be muddling its effectiveness and making it unreliable as a senolytic therapy. This likely explains why different senolytic studies using quercetin have yielded conflicting results: there are simply too many processes that can influence these natural molecules for them to be reliable.
We have seen in past mouse studies and recent Mayo Clinic human trials that quercetin, when used in combination with the cancer drug dasatinib, can be the basis for an effective therapy for eliminating senescent cells. Unfortunately, on its own, quercetin does not have a significant senolytic effect, which is possibly due to its limitations as a polyphenol.
However, there are ways to overcome these issues with quercetin and other similar polyphenols, and that is by using special delivery systems that make the molecules more effective and controllable. Polymer nanoparticles, lipid-based carriers, inclusion complexes, micelles, and conjugate-based delivery systems are all examples of approaches that can deliver molecules more effectively.
Nanoparticles make quercetin more effective
The researchers of this study opted to use a nanoparticle-based delivery system to carry quercetin molecules to senescent cells in order to destroy them [1]. They created magnetite nanoparticles and coated their surface with quercetin molecules, then examined the senolytic action of this approach.
They found that the nanoparticles were effective at attenuating inflammator
