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Finding new drugs – called "drug discovery" – is an expensive and time-consuming task. But a type of artificial intelligence called machine learning can massively accelerate the process and do the job for a fraction of the price. My colleagues and I recently used this technology to find three promising candidates for senolytic drugs – drugs that slow ageing and prevent age-related diseases. Senolytics work by killing senescent cells. These are cells that are "alive" (metabolically active), but which can no longer replicate, hence their nickname: zombie cells. The inability to replicate is not necessarily a bad thing. These cells...

Until recently, few people gave much thought to senescent cells. They are cells that linger in the body even after they have lost the ability to divide. But on Nov. 2, in what could be a landmark experiment in the study of aging, researchers at the Mayo Clinic reported that if you purge the body of its senescent cells, the tissues remain youthful and vigorous. The experiment was just in mice, and it cleared the cells with a genetic technique that cannot be applied to people. Like all critical experiments, it needs to be repeated in other labs before it...