A three-drug mix extended old mice lifespan by 42 percent

Zachery Robinson and Irina Conboy of UC Berkeley’s bioengineering department reported on 17 July 2026 in Aging that a three-drug combination they call DMA extended the lives of already-old mice. Median lifespan reached 1,002 days in treated animals against 815 in controls — about 102.6 extra days after treatment, a 41.7% increase. Treadmill endurance improved significantly. Hanging time and frailty scores did not differ from controls.

DMA is dichloroacetate, metformin and navitoclax, the last given at one-tenth the dose usually used. Navitoclax kills senescent cells but is toxic to platelets at standard doses, which is why senolytics have struggled to leave the laboratory. The Berkeley argument is that the metabolic drugs push senescent and cancerous cells toward a shared vulnerability, so a much smaller dose of the killing agent finishes the job.

The numbers rest on small groups — nine control animals and nine treated — which is enough to move a survival curve and not enough to settle a mechanism. The paper is open access under CC BY 4.0, and the result is in mice.