Project description:Older age is one of the strongest risk factors for COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Here, we sought to determine whether age-associated cellular senescence contributes to the severity of COVID-19 by studying the well-established golden hamster model of SARS-CoV-2-driven lung disease. We found that aged hamsters (22 months of age) accumulate senescent cells in the lungs and that the senolytic drug ABT-263 depletes these cells at baseline and during a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Relative to young hamsters (2 months of age), aged hamsters had a greater viral load during the acute phase of infection and displayed higher levels of sequelae during the post-acute phase. Interestingly, early treatment with ABT-263 was associated with a significantly lower pulmonary viral load, an effect associated with lower angiotensin converting enzyme 2, the receptor for SARS-CoV-2, and an amelioration of COVID-19-like lung disease in aged (but not young) animals. ABT-263 treatment of aged animals was also associated with lower pulmonary and systemic levels of senescence-associated secretory phenotype factors. Furthermore, early removal of senescent cells reduced the longer-term pulmonary inflammation. These data demonstrate the causative role of age-associated pre-existing senescent cells on the pathologic severity of experimental COVID-19.
Project description:Aging is known to alter the host repsonse to influenza infection. Here, we use single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to identify cellular changes in the lungs of young (16-week-old) and aged (80-week-old) mice following influenza infection.
Project description:Aging is known to alter the host repsonse to influenza infection. Here, we use 10x Visium spatial sequencing to identify spatial changes in mRNA expression of left lungs of young (16-week-old) and aged (80-week-old) mice following influenza infection.
Project description:Aging is known to alter the host repsonse to influenza infection. Here, we use bulk RNA sequencing (bulk RNA-seq) to identify cellular changes in the lungs of young (16-week-old) and aged (80-week-old) mice following influenza infection.
Project description:To identify molecular characteristics of young and aged lungs post-influenza infection, we isolated RNA from lungs 60 days post-infection and examined by bulk RNAseq. We found a large number of genes remain upregulated in aged compared to young lungs. Comparison with expression of immune system-related genes from Nanostring expriments indicated this was largely infection-induced rather than baseline differences between age. This indicates that aged lungs fail to return to homeostasis following a viral respiratory infection
Project description:To identify the disparaties of D^b-nucleoprotein specific resident memory CD8 T cells between young and aged mice, we pooled n=11 aged or n=18 young lungs together after intraveounously labeling T cells and sorted ivCD90- CD8a+ CD44hi CD69+ D^b-NP tetramer (PE+ & APC+) cells. By scRNA-seq, we found the aged population was missing a cluster in the young population that resembled typical functional resident memory CD8 T cells indicating that aged resident memory CD8 T cells of this specificity would have poor recall function.