Due to its involvement in many cellular processes such as normal ageing, tumor suppression, chronic diseases and many more, cellular senescence has gained increasing attention since its first description over 50 years ago. In addition, understanding of cellular senescence is invaluable in the development of therapeutic targets in the fight against age-related co-morbidities, cancer and chronic disease progression.
Over-expressed in senescent cells, Senescence-associated β-galactosidase (SA-β-gal), has been widely used as a marker of cellular senescence. In order to specifically detect this biomarker directly in living cells or tissues, let’s take a look at an easy and ready-to-use assay recently developed: the SPiDER-βGal- Cellular Senescence Detection kit.