Using signaling pathway activation analysis to identify prospective drugs that may slow down or reverse the effects of skin aging and photo-aging

Skin aging is a complex process, which is still poorly understood on the molecular level and cause and effect relationships between the many factors. However, most experts agree that solar radiation is the one of the major factors in skin aging. Recent studies demonstrate that modern sunscreen compounds do not provide complete protection and most of the UV-filters shows cytotoxic ability and may have serious side effects.

To explore signaling and metabolic pathway regulation during skin-aging process we used the GeroScope platform, based on the OncoFinder algorithm used in personalized medicine in oncology. We used over two thousand publically available samples of aged and photo-aged skin and various skin cell types to analyze pathway dysregulation during aging and photo-aging. We evaluated the activity of over 40,000 compounds for their ability to mimic signaling pathway activation profiles characteristic of young skin to shortlist potential candidates. We cross-reference the candidate molecules with the recently launched Geroprotectors.org database. We applied the PharmAtlas tools to estimate the possible adverse effects of compounds with reports odds ratio (ROR) and predicted adverse effects for compounds that did not have reports of adverse effects using signaling pathway activation similarity.