Testing Everything
(From Nature). One of the big advantages of the rapid decline in the cost of biotech research is that it makes fishing expeditions an economic proposition: "Researchers have long been trying to find drugs or elixirs that can stave off ageing. But they have met with little success, partly because it is laborious and time-consuming to show that a drug adds years to our lives. To get around this problem, Kerry Kornfeld of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his team tested drugs on a tiny, short-lived worm ... 'We went through a pharmaceutical textbook and picked a drug from each class.'" The end result is new longevity science to investigate - an epilepsy drug that lengthens worm life span by up to 50%.
Link: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050110/full/050110-16.html