Abstract
The average age of the population is increasing worldwide, which has a profound impact
on our society. This leads to an increasing demand for medicines and requires the
development of new strategies to promote health during the additional years. In the
search for resources and therapeutics for improved health during an extended life
span, attention has to be paid to environmental exposure and ecosystem burdens that
inevitably emerge with the extended consumption of medicines and drug development,
even in the preclinical stage. The hereby introduced sustainable strategy for drug
discovery is built on 3Rs, “Robustness, Reliability, and saving Resources”, inspired by both the 3Rs used in animal experiments and environmental protection,
and centers on the usefulness and the variety of the small model organism Caenorhabditis elegans for detecting health-promoting natural products. A workflow encompassing a multilevel
screening approach is presented to
maximize the amount of information on health-promoting samples, while considering
the 3Rs. A detailed, methodology- and praxis-oriented compilation and discussion of
proposed C. elegans health span assays and more disease-specific assays are presented to offer guidance
for scientists intending to work with C. elegans, thus facilitating the initial steps towards the integration of C. elegans assays in their laboratories.
Keywords
healthy ageing -
Caenorhabditis elegans
- natural product screening - sustainability - Apiaceae
