With an aging population globally, the demand for research in this area is expanding and the pressure is on to find therapies that can be shown to slow the effects of ageing. However, finding out if your compounds actually work to slow ageing and looking at the potential impact on patient quality of life is challenging and complex.

In vitro studies aren’t sufficient to show the impact on ageing, and it’s historically difficult to test for ageing on physiological models; researchers would typically have to do these studies on rodents or other mammals as they age but experiments are complex and involve very long timelines.

Conversely, if you have a drug you know has an impact on slowing ageing, but don’t understand how it works to do this, it’s very challenging to design a study to determine this mode of action and understand the target ID.

Ageing is a complex and heterogeneous process, so using natural models of ageing in whole organisms and large test populations is the best approach to study ageing.

When you want to understand whether your compound shows efficacy to slow ageing, C. elegans, combined with our unique Healthspan automated imaging technology and team of ageing experts, is a fast and reliable model.

When you know your compound has efficacy to slow ageing but don’t know what the target is or don’t understand the mechanism by which it slows ageing, C. elegans is also a powerful tool to understand the mode of action. We can use transgenics to knock out, modify, or insert genes and combine this with our Healthspan technology to understand whether those genes are responsible for the ageing-slowing impact of your compound.

• C. elegans automated Healthspan experiments last weeks, not months, and large populations can be tested non-invasively, without compromising on mobility and longevity readouts.
• C. elegans is a proven model in many academic fields of biology including ageing, where major breakthroughs have occurred by identifying mutants and pharmaceutical interventions that increase lifespan.
• Magnitude Biosciences use a method to monitor worm movement automatically, detecting moving worms and measuring their speed and location near-continually over the course of 7-10 days. As worms age, their movement slows. While clearly visible through a microscope, these changes are impossible to quantify objectively by human observation.
• Our automated data acquisition, expert picking of worms of the right age, and the use of defined reagents, helps us achieve a high level of data reproducibility, both between and within experimental runs.
• We can test large populations at a fraction of the cost and time in equivalent rodent or other mammal studies.

We provide the following benefits:

• Cost and time-efficient assays for predictivity data prior to rodent models.

• Rich, sensitive data set that goes far beyond traditional manual lifespan assays.
• Standardised, population-scale acute and chronic testing for mutation and compound effects on both longevity and fitness.

• Team of multidisciplinary experts to advise you on study design and data analysis.