Are aging biomarkers clinically relevant in oncogeriatrics?

Immunosenescence and inflammaging have been depicted for long as age-related heterogeneous blood phenotypic changes ("immunoaging"). Some of them can be reproduced in animal models either by accelerating telomere shortening or by forcing DNA damage response. According to these models, "immunoaging" is the consequence of replicative senescence of hematopoietic stem cells. This increasing knowledge may impact oncogeriatrics in the future since (1) an increasing evidence links hematopoietic and cancer stem cells regulations; (2) immunosenescence may be linked to cancer immunotolerance and the increasing rate of cancer incidence with age; (3) immunoaging has a major consequence during cancer treatment, since it explains increased hematological toxicities observed in the elderly and (4) it favors secondary cancers and mainly hemopathies. For all these reasons, aging biomarkers, among which are telomere length peripheral blood sampling but also analyses of telomere-linked proteins like shelterin complex or DNA-damage markers will probably be clinically relevant in the future. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.