First student webinar of this year, which held on March 12th has presented by Melike Donertas. Ageing as one of the inevitable biological process was focus of the presentation named “Gene Expression-Based Drug Repurposing to Target Ageing “. During almost two hours, Melike presented not only the methodology of the study for drug repurposing, but also a general overview of ageing studies, until now. Simultaneously, all applicants contributed the presentation by questions and suggestions.
Brief explanation of the study by herself as follows: “Ageing is the largest risk factor for a variety of non-communicable diseases. Previous studies on model organisms suggest life- and health-span can be modulated through genetic and chemical perturbations. In this study, instead of a target-centric approach, we adopt a systems level drug repurposing methodology to discover drugs that can combat human ageing. Using multiple publicly available gene expression datasets, we first identify the expression changes that can characterize ageing in human brain. We then compare these changes in gene expression with the drug induced expression changes to find drugs that are likely to modulate ageing. The drugs that we identified included significant number of already identified pro-longevity drugs, indicating that the method can discover de novo drugs that meliorate ageing. The approach has the advantages that, by using data from human brain ageing data it focuses on processes relevant in human ageing and that it is unbiased, making it possible to discover new targets for ageing studies.”
If you feel curious about this study, you may find the link here.