Measuring the Inflammasome in Oncogene-Induced Senescence.

Inflammasomes are multimeric protein complexes that process IL-1β by cleaving the translated full-length protein into its active IL-1β mature fragment. In oncogene-induced senescence, inflammasomes play a crucial role by regulating IL1R signaling and consequently modulating proliferation and the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Inflammasome activation requires two steps: (a) priming of the inflammasome by activation of IL1B expression, followed by (b) cleavage and release of mature IL-1β. In this chapter, we describe methods to detect both stages of inflammasome activation in cellular senescence.