A recently published paper in Nature Communications has been reported by The Times, and Sky News Cellular senescence is a stress response involved in ageing and diverse disease processes including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Senolytics are compounds that selectively kill these 'zombie cells' which accumulate as people mature. A collaborative team of scientists led by Vanessa Smer-Barreto, in the group of Diego Oyarzun at The University of Edinburgh, identified three senolytics using cost-effective machine learning algorithms trained solely on published data. This approach led to significant reduction in drug screening costs and demonstrates that artificial intelligence can take maximum advantage of small and diverse drug screening data. Crucially this paves the way for new open science approaches to early-stage drug discovery. Related Links Paper | Discovery of senolytics using machine learning Diego Oyarzun | BioMolecular Control Group The Times | AI finds drugs that could kill ‘zombie cells’ behind ageing Sky News | AI helps discover three drugs which could fight effects of ageing This article was published on 2024-06-17
