Senotherapy as a Novel Therapeutic Method in Cancer Treatment: With a Focus on Head and Neck Cancer

Senotherapy is one of the novel cancer therapeutic methods that have attracted the attention of scientists and clinicians during the recent decade. The major strategies in routine cancer treatment such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy induce senescence cell state in malignant cells to reduce their activity and control their tumorigenic behavior. However, the accumulation of these therapy-induced senescent (TIS) cells has an adverse effect in the long term on the prognosis of different types of cancer. In particular, secretion of senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) by TIS cells leads to a number of short-term and long-term adverse consequences on the tumor microenvironment (TME) such as therapy resistance, tumor metastasis, and recurrence. Senotherapeutic drugs, including senolytics and senomorphics, are novel adjuvant anticancer agents established to eliminate these cells. This chapter includes a comprehensive overview of senotherapeutic drugs with various mechanisms of action and their preclinical and clinical efficacy in the treatment of cancer, with an emphasis on their application on head and neck cancer.