Network-driven discovery of repurposable drugs targeting hallmarks of aging

Abstract

Despite the thousands of genes implicated in age-related phenotypes, effective interventions for aging remain elusive, a lack of advance rooted in the multifactorial nature of longevity and the functional interconnectedness of the molecular components implicated in aging. Here, we introduce a network medicine framework that integrates 2,358 longevity-associated genes onto the human interactome to identify existing drugs that can modulate aging processes. We find that genes associated with each hallmark of aging form a connected subgraph, or hallmark module, a discovery enabling us to measure the proximity of 6,442 clinically approved or experimental compounds to each hallmark. We then introduce a transcription-based metric, $pAGE$, which evaluates whether the drug-induced expression shifts reinforce or counteract known age-related expression changes. By integrating network proximity and $pAGE$, we identify multiple drug repurposing candidate that not only target specific hallmarks but act to reverse their aging-associated transcriptional changes. Our findings are interpretable, revealing for each drug the molecular mechanisms through which it modulates the hallmark, offering an experimentally falsifiable framework to leverage genomic discoveries to accelerate drug repurposing for longevity.