Science 3 min read

New Drug Cocktail May Hold the Key to Longer Life

Immortality may not, in fact, just be a thing of science fiction anymore. | Image by Katicaj | Pixabay.com

Immortality may not, in fact, just be a thing of science fiction anymore. | Image by Katicaj | Pixabay.com

Scientists have reportedly discovered a new drug cocktail that could potentially give humans longer and healthier lives in the future.

The search for the proverbial “Fountain of Youth” continues and scientists may have found the key to it. According to reports, scientists from the Yale-NUS College in Singapore have discovered a drug cocktail that could potentially double the lifespan of animals.

While the drug combination has not yet been tested on humans, its positive effects on creatures like fruit flies and nematode worms make the researchers believe it would work on people as well.

“Many countries in the world, including Singapore, are facing problems related to aging populations,” Jan Gruber, an Assistant Professor of Science (Biochemistry) at Yale-NUS College and Assistant Professor at the Department of Biochemistry of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS), said in a statement.

“If we can find a way to extend healthy lifespan and delay aging in people, we can counteract the detrimental effects of an aging population, providing countries not only medical and economic benefits but also a better quality of life for their people.”

The Anti-Aging Drug Cocktail

To find the anti-aging drug, Gruber and his team have combined drugs that are known to target the many different problems that affect lifespan. One of the drugs they used is the rapamycin which is currently being administered after organ transplant operations to prevent the body’s immune system from rejecting the transplanted organs.

Apparently, several kinds of this drug could increase the lifespan of many organisms, including the Caenorhabditis elegans (C elegans) worms, fruit flies, and mice. After several experiments, the researchers found two drugs that when combined, could be useful in extending the C elegans worms and fruit flies’ lifespan more than each of the individual drugs.

The drug cocktail could also double the mean lifespan of the organisms when combined with a third compound. The researchers claimed that the treatment has no adverse effect on the worms and flies’ health. Instead, the creatures were found to be healthier.

“We would benefit not only from having longer lives, but also spend more of those years free from age-related diseases like arthritis, cardiovascular disease, cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease,” Gruber went on to say.

The researchers are now designing more effective interventions to determine the molecular and biological structures of the drugs’ capabilities for computer model simulations. The latter will be used by the team to test thousands of more combinations and find the one that will be suitable for humans.

Do you think that humans should be searching for a cure for aging? 

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Chelle Fuertes

Chelle is the Product Management Lead at INK. She's an experienced SEO professional as well as UX researcher and designer. She enjoys traveling and spending time anywhere near the sea with her family and friends.

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