Intercellular Transfer of Mitochondria between Senescent Cells through Cytoskeleton-Supported Intercellular Bridges Requires mTOR and CDC42 Signalling

Cellular senescence is a state of irreversible cell proliferation arrest induced by various stressors including telomere attrition, DNA damage, and oncogene induction. While beneficial as an acute response to stress, the accumulation of senescent cells with increasing age is thought to contribute adversely to the development of cancer and a number of other age-related diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases for which there are currently no effective disease-modifying therapies. Non-cell-autonomous effects of senescent cells have been suggested to arise through the SASP, a wide variety of proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and exosomes secreted by senescent cells. Here, we report an additional means of cell communication utilised by senescent cells via large numbers of membrane-bound intercellular bridges—or tunnelling nanotubes (TNTs)—containing the cytoskeletal components actin and tubulin, which form direct physical connections between cells. We observe the presence of mitochondria in these TNTs and show organelle transfer through the TNTs to adjacent cells. While transport of individual mitochondria along single TNTs appears by time-lapse studies to be unidirectional, we show by differentially labelled co-culture experiments that organelle transfer through TNTs can occur between different cells of equivalent cell age, but that senescent cells, rather than proliferating cells, appear to be predominant mitochondrial donors. Using small molecule inhibitors, we demonstrate that senescent cell TNTs are dependent on signalling through the mTOR pathway, which we further show is mediated at least in part through the downstream actin-cytoskeleton regulatory factor CDC42. These findings have significant implications for the development of senomodifying therapies, as they highlight the need to account for local direct cell-cell contacts as well as the SASP in order to treat cancer and diseases of ageing in which senescence is a key factor.