Technology Quarterly | Out with the old
Ageing bodies need to get rid of decrepit cells
Senolytics and cellular rejuvenation could hold the key
In 1962 Leonard hayflick, then at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, now retired, made one of the most famous observations in the science of longevity: in laboratories, non-cancerous mammalian cells can reproduce themselves for only a fixed number of times before cell division ceases and they enter a state called senescence. For human cells, this Hayflick limit is 40-60.
This article appeared in the Technology Quarterly section of the print edition under the headline “Out with the old, in with the new”
From the September 30th 2023 edition
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