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Review
. 2022 Nov 29;11(12):1731.
doi: 10.3390/biology11121731.

Role of Senescent Cells in Cutaneous Wound Healing

Allison M Andrade  1 , Mingda Sun  1 , Nathan S Gasek  1 , Geneva R Hargis  2 , Roshanak Sharafieh  3 , Ming Xu  1
Affiliations
Review

Role of Senescent Cells in Cutaneous Wound Healing

Allison M Andrade et al. Biology (Basel). .

Abstract

Cellular senescence has gained increasing attention in the field of aging research. Senescent cells have been implicated in biological aging processes, tumorigenesis, development, and wound repair amongst other processes and pathologies. Recent findings reveal that senescent cells can both promote and inhibit cutaneous wound healing processes. Relating senescent cells in acute and chronic wounds will help to clarify their role in wound healing processes and inform our understanding of senescent cell heterogeneity. To clarify this apparent contradiction and guide future research and therapeutic development, we will review the rapidly growing field of cellular senescence and its role in wound healing biology.

Keywords: acute cutaneous wounds; aging; cellular senescence; chronic cutaneous wounds; heterogeneity; p16; p21; senolytics; wound healing.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The skin microbiome balance and skin wound healing.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Acute cutaneous wound repair occurs in four well defined stages: hemostasis [6,33,35,39], inflammation [6,33,35,39,41], proliferation [40], and remodeling [6,32,34,42], which are mediated by distinct cell populations.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Impact of aging on skin composition, function & wound healing [6,34,38].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Senescent cells in acute and chronic cutaneous wounds [45]. Senescent cells vary by type, distribution, SASP production, and elicit varying phenotypes depending on wound chronicity [42,46,52,53,54,55]. Cellular senescence may participate in physiologic healing in acute contexts while inhibiting overall wound closure in a chronic setting [42,50,51,52,54,56,57,58,59].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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