Abstract: Provides are approaches for anticancer and antiaging treatments by administration of reverse transcriptase (RT) activity inhibitors that function to inhibit RT encoded by ORF2 of LINE1, or any RT that can participate in transcriptional activation of retroelements. Also provided are approaches to discovery of new compounds that can inhibit RTs, and identifying individuals who would benefit from treatment with such RT inhibitors, and treating such individuals. The methods are applicable for use in populations of cancer cells, pre-cancerous cells, somatic cells, and combinations thereof. Also provided are methods for monitoring the efficacy of a treatment that inhibits development of resistance to pharmaceutical agents, methods for prophylaxis and/or therapy for a pathology correlated with accumulation of somatic cells capable of spontaneously generating genetic alterations independently of cell divisions, wherein such cells express functional LINE1 elements.

Abstract: Provided is the discovery that dormant senescence prone cells (DSPCs) record an organism's exposure to genotoxic stress over the lifetime of the organism. The disclosure includes identifying DSPCs, using the amount of DSPCs to determine genotoxic dosage/dosimetry, and using these determinations in treatment and therapeutic approaches.