What this means
Researchers built a way to test many drugs for lifespan effects in five kinds of living things. The method aims to pick out drugs that may be worth more study.
Plain-English summary written by an AI model from the abstract. The original is below.
- Who it was tested in
- Yeast, nematodes, fruit flies, killifish, and mice; over 400 compounds
- Kind of research
- Research in animals or cells
The science
- Original title
- A cross-species drug-discovery platform to accelerate the identification of lifespan-extending interventions.
- Authors
- Perez K, Schoenfeldt L, Phelps GB et al.
- Journal
- Cell reports
- Published
- Aug 31, 2026
- Study type
- Lab or animal study · indexed as animal research
- PMID
- 42671914 ↗
Abstract
We develop an integrated, high-throughput platform to evaluate pharmacological lifespan-extending interventions across five model organisms spanning unicellular to mammalian biology including yeast, nematodes, fruit flies, killifish, and mice. By combining automated imaging, miniaturized assays, and deep-learning-based death detection, we evaluate over 400 compounds across thousands of conditions. In S. cerevisiae, a miniaturized PI/flow cytometry CLS assay enables scalable screening and identifies key assay confounders, while in C. elegans and D. melanogaster, compact imaging platforms coupled to YOLO-based detection provide a no-transfer, high-throughput survival scoring, and capture compound-, diet-, and sex-dependent effects. In killifish, we develop an in-house drug-pellet formulation for standardized oral delivery in large cohorts, and in mice we combine longitudinal lifespan studies with home-cage activity monitoring to assess late-life interventions. Cross-species integration identifies multi-species geroprotectors and reveals convergence on known and novel conserved longevity pathways, illustrating how this scalable framework can prioritize interventions with high translational potential.
Perez K, Schoenfeldt L, Phelps GB et al. A cross-species drug-discovery platform to accelerate the identification of lifespan-extending interventions. Cell reports. 2026. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2026.117897. PMID: 42671914. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42671914/