Brain cellular senescence in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease

The accumulation of senescent cells contributes to aging pathologies, including neurodegenerative diseases, and its selective removal improves physiological and cognitive function in wild-type mice as well as in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) models. AD models recapitulate some, but not all components of disease and do so at different rates. Whether brain cellular senescence is recapitulated in some or all AD models and whether the emergence of cellular senescence in AD mouse models occurs before or after the expected onset of AD-like cognitive deficits in these models are not yet known. The goal of this study was to identify mouse models of AD and AD-related dementias that develop measurable markers of cellular senescence in brain and thus may be useful to study the role of cellular senescence in these conditions. We measured the levels of cellular senescence markers in the brains of P301S(PS19), P301L, hTau, and 3xTg-AD mice that model amyloidopathy and/or tauopathy in AD and related dementias and in wild-type, age-matched control mice for each strain. Expression of cellular senescence markers in brains of transgenic P301L and 3xTg-AD mice was largely indistinguishable from that in WT control age-matched mice. In contrast, markers of cellular senescence were differentially increased in brains of transgenic hTau and P301S(PS19) mice as compared to WT control mice before the onset of AD-like cognitive deficits. Taken together, our data suggest that P301S(PS19) and hTau mice may be useful models for the study of brain cellular senescence in tauopathies including, but not limited to, AD.