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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 9|pp 2889—2897

c-Met as a new marker of cellular senescence

Maria Boichuck1, Jonathan Zorea1, Moshe Elkabets1, Marina Wolfson1, Vadim E. Fraifeld1
  • 1The Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics, Center for Multidisciplinary Research on Aging, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, 8410501, Israel
Received: April 8, 2019Accepted: May 4, 2019Published: May 13, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101961

Copyright: Boichuck et al. This is an open‐access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Here, we reported for the first time an increased expression of c-Met protein in primary cultures of human dermal and pulmonary fibroblasts of late passages. This suggests that c-Met could serve as an early marker of cellular senescence (CS). The levels of c-Met-related signaling proteins phospho-Akt and Stat3 were also increased in (pre)senescent fibroblasts. Considering the anti-apoptotic activity of Akt and the involvement of Stat3 in mediating the effects of proinflammatory cytokines, the findings of this study indicate that c-Met could contribute through its downstream targets or partners to at least two major phenotypical features of CS – resistance to apoptosis and senescence-associated secretory phenotype.