Possibilities of using T-cell biophysical biomarkers of ageing

Aging is interrelated with the development of immunosenescence. This article focuses on one of the cell sets of the adaptive immune system, T cells, and provides a review of the known changes in T-cells associated with aging. Such fundamental changes affect both cell molecular content and internal ordering. However, acquiring a complete description of the changes at these levels would require extensive measurements of parameters and, furthermore, important fine details of the internal ordering that may be difficult to detect. Therefore, an alternative approach for the characterization of cells consists in the performance of physical measurements of the whole cell, such as deformability measurements or migration measurements: the physical parameters, complementing the commonly used chemical biomarkers, may contribute to a better understanding of the evolution of T-cell states during aging. Mechanical measurements, among other biophysical measurements, have the advantage of their relative simplicity: one single parameter agglutinates the complex effects of the variety of changes that gradually appear in cells during aging. © 2022 Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.