In an unfinished part of his basement, 95-year-old Richard Soller zips around a makeshift track encircling boxes full of medals hes won for track and field and long-distance running.

Without a hint of breathlessness, he says: I can put in miles down here. Steps away is an expensive leather recliner he bought when he retired from Procter & Gamble with visions of relaxing into old age. He proudly proclaims hes never used it; hes been too busy training for competitions, such as the National Senior Games.

Soller, who lives near Cincinnati, has achieved an enviable goal chased by humans since ancient times: staying healthy and active in late life. Its a goal that eludes so many that growing old is often associated with getting frail and sick. But scientists are trying to change that — and tackle one of humanitys biggest challenges — through a little known but flourishing field of aging research called cellular senescence.

Its built upon the idea that cells eventually stop dividing and enter a senescent state in response to various forms of damage. The body removes most of them. But others linger like zombies. They arent dead. But as the Mayo Clinics Nathan LeBrasseur puts it, they can harm nearby cells like moldy fruit corrupting a fruit bowl. They accumulate in older bodies, which mounting evidence links to an array of age-related conditions such as dementia, cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.

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But scientists wonder: Can the zombie cell buildup be stopped? The ability to understand aging — and the potential to intervene in the fundamental biology of aging — is truly the greatest opportunity we have had, maybe in history, to transform human health, LeBrasseur says. Extending the span of healthy years impacts quality of life, public health, socioeconomics, the whole shebang. With the number of people 65 or older expected to double globally by 2050, cellular senescence is a very hot topic, says Viviana Perez Montes of the National Institutes of Health. According to an Associated Press analysis of an NIH research database, there have been around 11,500 total projects involving cellular senescence since 1985, far more in recent years.