FOXO4-DRI

FOXO4-DRI is a synthetic senolytic peptide built on a D-retro-inverso scaffold. It was designed to disrupt the interaction between the FOXO4 transcription factor and the tumour-suppressor p53 — the survival mechanism that senescent ("zombie") cells rely on — freeing p53 to trigger apoptosis selectively in those cells.

Interest in FOXO4-DRI stems from a landmark 2017 study in Cell, where the peptide cleared senescent cells and was associated with restored fitness, fur density and renal function in aged mice, and from later in vitro and rodent work across chondrocyte, fibroblast, endothelial and Leydig-cell models. It sits at the research frontier of "senescent-cell clearance" and remains a rare, specialist reagent rather than a mass-market peptide.