Modelling the spatiotemporal dynamics of senescent cells in wound healing, chronic wounds, and fibrosis

Cellular senescence is known to drive age-related pathology through the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). However, it also plays important physiological roles such as cancer suppression, embryogenesis and wound healing. Wound healing is a tightly regulated process which when disrupted results in conditions such as fibrosis and chronic wounds. Senescent cells appear during the proliferation phase of the healing process where the SASP is involved in maintaining tissue homeostasis after damage. Interestingly, SASP composition and functionality was recently found to be temporally regulated, with distinct SASP profiles involved: a fibrogenic, followed by a fibrolytic SASP, which could have important implications for the role of senescent cells in wound healing. Given the number of factors at play a full understanding requires addressing the multiple levels of complexity, pertaining to the various cell behaviours, individually followed by investigating the interactions and influence each of these elements have on each other and the system as a whole. Here, a systems biology approach was adopted whereby a multi-scale model of wound healing that includes the dynamics of senescent cell behaviour and corresponding SASP composition within the wound microenvironment was developed. The model was built using the software CompuCell3D, which is based on a Cellular Potts modelling framework. We used an existing body of data on healthy wound healing to calibrate the model and validation was done on known disease conditions. The model clearly shows how differences in the spatiotemporal dynamics of different senescent cell phenotypes lead to several distinct repair outcomes. These differences in senescent cell dynamics can be attributed to variable SASP composition, duration of senescence and temporal induction of senescence relative to the healing stage. The range of outcomes demonstrated strongly highlight the dynamic and heterogenous role of senescent cells in wound healing, fibrosis and chronic wounds, and their fine-tuned control. Further specific data to increase model confidence could be used to explore senolytic treatments in wound disorders.