Anti-ageing drug derived from a compound in green tea, onions and RED WINE is on the horizon: Scientists discover cocktail of cancer medication and plant–based supplement could haltbody’s decline
- Zombie – or senescent – cells are alive but do not function properly
- Cell removal improved the ability to walk in patients with deadly lung disease
- ‘Glimmer’ drug cocktail may work for other ’20 diseases’ linked to zombie cells
An anti-ageing drug may be on the horizon, research suggests.
Scientists have discovered a drug cocktail that clears senescent – or ‘zombie’ – cells from the body.
Senescent cells are alive but non-functioning and have been linked to everything from arthritis to Alzheimer’s.
They are also thought to cause the deadly lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) by triggering inflammation.
Researchers gave patients the cancer drug Sprycel (dasatinib) and the plant supplement quercetin – found in red wine, onions and green tea – to test how zombie cells affect IPF.
Patients taking the cocktail – both of which are known to trigger suicide in senescent cells – became significantly more mobile after just three weeks.
The findings raise hope that senolytic drugs may lead to a new way of targeting age-related disease.
Drug cocktail that clears ‘zombie cells’ from the body may target ageing (stock)
‘We know there are at least 20 serious conditions that senescent cells are implicated in,’ senior study author Dr James Kirkland, from the Mayo Clinic, said.
‘We’re starting with the most serious, but then we hope to move on to the rest. The same approach should work in multiple diseases.’
As well as the Mayo Clinic, the research was also carried out by Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
It was led by Dr Jamie Justice, an assistant professor in gerontology and geriatric medicine, at Wake Forest.
Obstructive IPF is a chronic lung disease that is ‘generally relentlessly progressive and fatal’, the authors wrote in The Lancet online journal EBioMedicine. It has an average survival rate post-diagnosis of just 3.8 years.
IPF causes scarring of the lungs, which makes them less able to inflate and take in oxygen. This can leave sufferers breathless while doing simple activities, like walking.
Around 6,000 people are diagnosed with IPF in the UK every year, of which 85 per cent are over 70, British Lung Foundation statistics reveal.
Between 30,000 and 40,000 cases are diagnosed annually in the US, according to the US National Library of Medicine.
The combination of dasatinib and quercetin has been shown to reduce the number of senescent cells in mice studies.
This has helped prevent a range of diseases in rodents, including osteoporosis and fatty liver.
In the first study of its kind, 14 elderly adults with controlled IPF were given dasatinib and quercetin over three consecutive days once a week for three weeks.
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