Objective

Many increasingly prevalent diseases share a common risk factor: age. However, relatively little is known about pharmaceutical interventions against ageing, despite our knowledge that many genes and pathways are important in the ageing process and numerous studies demonstrate that genetic interventions can lead to a healthier ageing phenotype. An important challenge is to assess the potential to repurpose existing drugs for initial testing on model organisms, where such experiments are possible. To this end, we present several approaches to rank drug-like compounds according to their likelihood to modulate ageing or their testability in model organisms. We consider information on genetic effects on ageing, orthology relationships and sequence conservation, 3D protein structures and expression data, combined with data for given drug molecules. The top ranked compounds are thus prime candidates for in vivo testing of their effects on lifespan in model organisms or cells. As such, these compounds are promising as research tools and ultimately a step towards identifying drugs for a healthier human ageing.