The results of these researchers in Jacksonville, Fla., are that a drug-and-supplement combination therapy can be used to lessen the harmful effects of senescent cells, or, to be more exact, zombie cells, in diabetic kidney disease.

In an article published by the Lancet, the team has found that the combination of the cancer drug dasatanib and a naturally occurring substance quercetin reduced inflammation and enhanced protective factors in the kidney.

Diabetic kidney disease is the number one cause of renal failure and goes over 12 million individuals in the U.S. Whereas there is a partial cure in newer treatments to slow the loss of kidney function, it has no cure at all.

According to LaTonya Hickson, a nephrologist with Mayo Clinic in Florida and the main researcher of the study, the combination therapy, administered on a short term basis, decreased the amount of senescent cells within a preclinical diabetes kidney disease model and also led to the enhancement of kidney functioning. In order to prolong the health of the kidney, researchers have been keen on the solution to the existence of senescent cells, which do not get to pass through the natural process of death and instead hang around in tissues leading to aging and disease.

Therapy to Attack Senescent Cells

The therapeutic strategy is senolytics, natural and synthetic substances that in combination selectively attack senescent cells.

In a clinical trial that was previously carried out and was a pilot study, researchers at the Mayo Clinic led by Hickson discovered that dasatanib combination with quercetin diminished senescent cells of skin and fat tissues in diabetic kidney disease patients. The impact of the combination therapy on senescence and protective factors on the diabetic kidney, however, had not been described yet.

“The need to demonstrate that this single, momentary, treatment has an outcome on the kidneys was informed by the necessity to do so without the use of invasive procedures in the patients,” says Xiaohui Bian, a nephrologist who did the work as a post-doctoral fellow at Mayo Clinic and leads the study.

The group identified that the combination therapy enhanced kidney performance and protective mechanisms and minimized injury, senescent cells, and inflammation in a preclinical model of diabetic kidney disease. The combination therapy also lowered the number of senescent cells and the inflammatory response caused by them in cultured human kidney cells.

According to Hickson, the results indicate that this combination treatment has a potential to assist in reducing and stopping the damage of kidneys caused by diabetes. These two studies are now promising and indicate that larger scale research in patients with senolytics is warranted to enhance the health of the kidneys.