Failure of immunosurveillance accelerates aging.

Immunosurveillance is generally conceived as a mechanism through which the immune system detects and eliminates (pre-)malignant cells, thus reducing the risk of developing cancer. A recent paper by Ovadya et al. demonstrates that knockout of the gene coding for perforin-1 causes accelerated accumulation of senescent cells in multiple mouse organs, thereby speeding up the aging process. These results suggest that immunosurveillance plays a much broader role in maintaining organismal health than it had been suspected.