The increasing life expectancy of the world population has become an economic and global public health problem. Increased life expectancy tracks with a higher incidence of multiple chronic conditions, despite unprecedented advances in prevention, diagnostics, and treatment. Ageing is the greatest risk factor for many life-threatening disorders, including cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration and cancer.

Ageing in all tissues is associated with increased cellular senescence, a stress-response process whereby damaged cells exit the cell cycle permanently and produce a pro-inflammatory senescenceassociated secretory phenotype (SASP). Moreover, senescent cells accumulate in multiple chronic diseases across the age range, like Obesity and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). Long-term persistence of senescent cells and their SASP disrupt tissue structure and function having deleterious paracrine and systemic effects causing fibrosis, inflammation, and a possible carcinogenic response. Remarkably, even a relatively low abundance of senescent cells (10À15% in aged primates)[1] is sufficient to cause tissue dysfunction [2]. Prof. James Kirkland and his team at Mayo Clinic have pioneered a new class of agents which eliminate senescent cells named ‘senolytics’-from the words “senescence” and “lytic” À destroying. Through exploiting senescent cells’ dependence on specific pro-survival pathways, senolytics transiently disable the pro-survival networks that defend senescent cells against their own apoptotic environment without affecting proliferating or quiescent, differentiated cells [3, 4]. Senolytics thus far tested include dasatinib (D, a FDA-approved tyrosine kinase inhibitor), quercetin (Q, a flavonoid present in many fruits and vegetables), navitoclax, A1331852 and A1155463 (Bcl-2 pro-survival family inhibitors) and fistein (F, a flavonoid)[3]. Pre-clinical studies conducted in mice have shown senolytics eliminate senescent cells resulting in delaying, preventing or alleviating multiple age-and senescence-related conditions, including