Normal and cancer cells facing their demise following exposure to radio-chemotherapy can actively participate in choosing their subsequent fate. These programmed cell fate decisions include true cell death (apoptosis-necroptosis) and therapy-induced cellular senescence (TIS), a permanent "proliferative arrest" commonly portrayed as premature cellular aging. Despite a permanent loss of proliferative potential, senescent cells remain viable and are highly bioactive at the microenvironment level, resulting in a prolonged impact on tissue architecture and functions. Cellular senescence is primarily documented as a tumor suppression mechanism that prevents cellular transformation. In the context of normal tissues, cellular senescence also plays important roles in tissue repair, but contributes to age-associated tissue dysfunction when senescent cells accumulate. Theoretically, in multi-step cancer progression models, cancer cells have already bypassed cellular senescence during their immortalization step (see hallmarks of cancer). It is then perhaps surprising to find that cancer cells often retain the ability to undergo TIS, or premature aging. This occurs because cellular senescence results from multiple signalling pathways, some retained in cancer cells, aiming to prevent cell cycle progression in damaged cells. Since senescent cancer cells persist after therapy and secrete an array of cytokines and growth factors that can modulate the tumor microenvironment, these cells may have beneficial and detrimental effects regarding immune modulation and survival of remaining proliferation-competent cancer cells. Similarly, while normal cells undergoing senescence are believed to remain indefinitely growth arrested, whether this is true for senescent cancer cells remains unclear, raising the possibility that these cells may represent a reservoir for cancer recurrence after treatment. This review discusses our current knowledge on cancer cell senescence and highlight questions that must be addressed to fully understand the beneficial and detrimental impacts of cellular senescence during cancer therapy.

Loss of telomeric DNA leads to telomere uncapping, which triggers a persistent, p53-centric DNA damage response that sustains a stable senescence-associated proliferation arrest. Here, we show that in normal cells telomere uncapping triggers a focal telomeric DNA damage response accompanied by a transient cell cycle arrest. Subsequent cell division with dysfunctional telomeres resulted in sporadic telomeric sister chromatid fusions that gave rise to next-mitosis genome instability, including non-telomeric DNA lesions responsible for a stable, p53-mediated, senescence-associated proliferation arrest. Unexpectedly, the blocking of Rad51/RPA-mediated homologous recombination, but not non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), prevented senescence despite multiple dysfunctional telomeres. When cells approached natural replicative senescence, interphase senescent cells displayed genome instability, whereas near-senescent cells that underwent mitosis despite the presence of uncapped telomeres did not. This suggests that these near-senescent cells had not yet acquired irreversible telomeric fusions. We propose a new model for telomere-initiated senescence where tolerance of telomere uncapping eventually results in irreversible non-telomeric DNA lesions leading to stable senescence. Paradoxically, our work reveals that senescence-associated tumor suppression from telomere shortening requires irreversible genome instability at the single-cell level, which suggests that interventions to repair telomeres in the pre-senescent state could prevent senescence and genome instability.

Replicative senescence is the permanent growth arrest caused by gradual telomere attrition occurring at each round of genome replication. Critically shortened telomeres lose their protective shelterin complex and t-loop structure revealing uncapped chromosome ends that are recognized as DNA double-strand breaks causing a p53-dependent DNA damage response (DDR) towards proliferation arrest. Because telomeres are heterogeneous in length within a single cell, the number of short telomeres necessary for senescence onset remains ill defined.Using controlled Tin2-mediated shelterin inactivation, we show that telomere uncapping is not sufficient to trigger senescence. While uncapping generates expected telomeric DNA damage detection, the associated weak DDR allows a rapid bypass of the primary growth arrest and reentry into the cell cycle despite dysfunctional telomeres. During the ensuing mitosis, fused telomeres lead to additional DNA breaks and to genomic instability including chromosomes bridges or micronuclei, which sustain a secondary entry into stable growth arrest. The loss of p53 prevented both primary and secondary growth arrest, leading to amplified genomic instablility. Our results support a new multistep model for entry into telomere-mediated replicative senescence in normal cells, which is not directly induced by telomere uncapping, but rather by an amplification of DNA lesions caused by telomere fusions that leads to permanent irreparable genome damage.

Tip60 complex cooperate with non-canonical DDR activity to trigger paracrine signals -Low-level chromatin-associated ATM activity is required for the SASP -The intensity and temporal dynamics of the SASP can be manipulated eTOC blurb (40 words) A temporal ballet between DNA damage response ATM/MRN and NuA4/Tip60 complexes control senescence-associated paracrine signals that are important during aging and cancer therapy, suggesting that DNA damage responses, acetylation, and chromatin remodeling can be exploited to manipulate senescence and benefit health. Malaquin et al. 3/36 SUMMARY Senescent cells display senescence-associated (SA) phenotypic programs such as proliferation arrest (SAPA) and secretory phenotype (SASP), which mediate their impact on tissue homeostasis. Curiously, senescence-inducing persistent DNA double-strand breaks (pDSBs) cause an immediate DNA damage response (DDR) and SAPA, but SASP requires days to develop, suggesting it requires additional molecular events. Here, we show that pDSBs provoke delayed recruitment of MRN/ATM and KAT5/TRRAP (NuA4/Tip60) complexes to global chromatin. This coincided with activating histone marks on upregulated SASP genes, whereas depletion of these complexes compromised the SASP. Conversely, histone deacetylase inhibition triggered accelerated MRN/ATM/Tip60dependent SASP without pDSBs, interlacing acetylation and non-canonical DNA damageindependent, low-level DDR activity in SASP maturation. DDR/acetylation regulation of SA programs is preserved in human cancer cells, suggesting novel targets for modifying treatment-induced SA phenotypes. We propose that delayed chromatin recruitment of acetyltransferases cooperates with non-canonical DDR signaling to ensure SASP activation only in the context of senescence, and not in response to a transient DNA damage-induced proliferation arrest. Malaquin et al. 4/36