Cellular Senescence 2025

This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3.

This is a joint Collection across npj Aging, Nature Aging, Nature Metabolism, Nature Cell Biology and Scientific Reports. Please see the relevant journal webpages to check which article types the journals consider.

Cellular senescence is a hallmark of aging and a key process influencing healthspan and age-related disease. Once viewed simply as an irreversible cell-cycle arrest, senescence is now recognized as a complex, dynamic state that profoundly shapes tissue function throughout life. While transient senescence supports development, wound healing, and tumor suppression, the chronic accumulation of senescent cells contributes to inflammation, tissue degeneration, and systemic aging.

This Collection aims to showcase advances in understanding how senescence drives aging and age-associated disorders, and how targeting senescent cells or their secretory phenotype (SASP) may promote healthy longevity. We welcome studies that investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms of senescence, its regulation by stress, metabolism, and immunity, and its roles across tissues and disease models.

Recent breakthroughs in single-cell profiling, imaging, and multi-omics technologies are revealing the heterogeneity of senescent cell states and their context-dependent effects. Translational studies are also rapidly expanding, exploring the therapeutic potential of senolytic and senomorphic interventions to mitigate age-related decline.

We invite original research, reviews, and perspectives covering, but not limited to:

• Mechanisms, metabolic rewiring, and biomarkers of cellular senescence in aging tissues
• Bystander and systemic effects of senescent cells, including how they influence neighboring or distant cells, immune responses, and tissue crosstalk
• Interactions between senescent cells, inflammation, and immune surveillance
• Senescence heterogeneity and plasticity, including tissue-specific and molecularly distinct senescent subpopulations
• Senescence in age-related diseases, regeneration, and stem cell dysfunction
• Emerging technologies to study senescence, including single-cell and spatial omics, advanced imaging, and systems biology approaches
• Senotherapeutic strategies, including senolytics, senomorphics, immune-modulating therapies, and translational applications targeting the SASP

By bringing together work from molecular biology, geroscience, and translational medicine, this Collection seeks to deepen our understanding of cellular senescence as both a driver and potential therapeutic target of aging.