Fruit flies live longer with combination drug treatment

A triple drug combination has been used to extend the lifespan of fruit flies by 48% in a new study led by UCL and the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing. The three drugs are all already in use as medical treatments: lithium as a mood stabiliser, trametinib as a cancer treatment and rapamycin as an immune system regulator. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , suggest that a combination drug treatment may one day be helpful at preventing age-related diseases in people. "As life expectancies increase, we are also seeing an increase of age-related diseases so there is an urgent need to find ways to improve health in old age," said the study's co-lead author, Dr Jorge Castillo-Quan, who began the research at the UCL Institute of Healthy Ageing before moving to Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School. "Here, by studying fruit flies which age much more rapidly than people, we have found that a combination drug treatment targeting different cellular processes may be an effective way to slow down the ageing process." The researchers were building on previous studies finding that lithium, trametinib and rapamycin can each extend lifespan in fruit flies ( Drosophila ),* which is supported by other preliminary evidence in mice, worms, and cells, and observational findings in people. The three drugs all act on different cellular signalling pathways that together form the nutrient sensing network, which is conserved across evolution from worms and flies all the way to humans.