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Unraveling effects of anti-aging drugs on C. elegans using liposomes

Zhang, Aihan; Hsiung, Kuei Ching; Kern, Carina C; Wang, Yuting; Girtle, Anna L; Xu, Nuo; Gems, David; (2023) Unraveling effects of anti-aging drugs on C. elegans using liposomes. Geroscience 10.1007/s11357-023-00800-x. Green open access

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Abstract

Liposome-mediated delivery is a possible means to overcome several shortcomings with C. elegans as a model for identifying and testing drugs that retard aging. These include confounding interactions between drugs and the nematodes' bacterial food source and failure of drugs to be taken up into nematode tissues. To explore this, we have tested liposome-mediated delivery of a range of fluorescent dyes and drugs in C. elegans. Liposome encapsulation led to enhanced effects on lifespan, requiring smaller quantities of compounds, and enhanced uptake of several dyes into the gut lumen. However, one dye (Texas red) did not cross into nematode tissues, showing that liposomes cannot ensure the uptake of all compounds. Of six compounds previously reported to extend lifespan (vitamin C, N-acetylcysteine, glutathione (GSH), trimethadione, thioflavin T (ThT), and rapamycin), this effect was reproduced for the latter four in a condition-dependent manner. For GSH and ThT, antibiotics abrogated life extension, implying a bacterially mediated effect. With GSH, this was attributable to reduced early death from pharyngeal infection and associated with alterations of mitochondrial morphology in a manner suggesting a possible innate immune training effect. By contrast, ThT itself exhibited antibiotic effects. For rapamycin, significant increases in lifespan were only seen when bacterial proliferation was prevented. These results document the utility and limitations of liposome-mediated drug delivery for C. elegans. They also illustrate how nematode-bacteria interactions can determine the effects of compounds on C. elegans lifespan in a variety of ways.

Type: Article
Title: Unraveling effects of anti-aging drugs on C. elegans using liposomes
Location: Switzerland
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/s11357-023-00800-x
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-023-00800-x
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords: Aging, C. elegans, Drug, Infection, Liposomes
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10169516
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