Considering that endothelial senescence is the initial step of developing atherosclerosis (Davignon & Ganz, 2004) and IL‐1β is an important mediator and biomarker of atherosclerosis and a SASP gene itself, we believe that understanding the mechanism and the signal transduction pathway of endothelial senescence as we present in this model will give us new insights into the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. The gene discussed is IL1B; the disease is atherosclerosis.