James L. Kirkland, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Mayo Clinic Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging, discusses a study finding a new class of drugs, identified and validated by Mayo Clinic researchers and their collaborators, clearly reduces health problems in mice by limiting the effect of senescent cells — the cells that cause frailty and contribute to diseases associated with age. The researchers say this is a first step toward developing similar treatments for aging patients. Their findings appear in the journal Aging Cell.