Northeastern-Harvard Team Flags Oxymetazoline From 6,442 Drugs as Longevity Candidate
Updated
Updated · ScienceAlert · Jul 26
Northeastern-Harvard Team Flags Oxymetazoline From 6,442 Drugs as Longevity Candidate
2 articles · Updated · ScienceAlert · Jul 26
Summary
Oxymetazoline—best known in Afrin nasal spray and redness treatments—emerged as a healthy-longevity candidate in a new Nature Aging study, with researchers linking it to improved cell-to-cell communication that declines with age.
The Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School team built the framework by mapping 1,250 aging-linked genes onto the human interactome, where more than 500,000 protein interactions revealed clustered aging “neighborhoods” rather than scattered targets.
Screening 6,442 approved or known drugs against those clusters, the model ranked compounds by whether they hit hallmark-related genes and whether their effects appeared to slow rather than accelerate aging processes.
Aspirin also surfaced as a promising candidate, but the researchers said the work does not show any drug extends human life yet; instead, it provides a roadmap for testing repurposed medicines in cells, animals and eventually humans.