Cellular senescence is a stress response that activates innate immune cells, yet little is known about its interplay with the adaptive immune system. Senescent cells are unique in that they eventually stop multiplying but don’t die off when they should. However, not all senescent cells are bad. The molecules and compounds expressed by senescent cells play important roles across the lifespan, including in embryonic development, childbirth, and wound healing. Now scientists at IRB Barcelona, led by ICREA researcher Manuel Serrano, PhD, and Federico Pietrocola, PhD, now at the Karolinska Institute have studied how inducing senescence in cancer cells improves the effectiveness of the immune response to a greater degree than dead cancer cells.
