Senolytic mechanism: selective apoptosis

Why the same peptide kills one cell and spares another

A senolytic is only useful if it is selective: it must kill senescent cells while leaving healthy ones intact. FOXO4-DRI achieves this not through targeted delivery but through a difference in the cells themselves, senescent cells carry more of the FOXO4-p53 complex and a death machinery already primed to fire.

This unit examines how competitive displacement produces apoptosis, why the effect is concentration-dependent, and where the selectivity story is strong versus where it is still an assumption.