Life Extension

There has been much excitement about reveratrol as a life extension drug. But from the In The Pipeline website by Derek Lowe, here is a new chemical to pin your hopes on, Rapamycin. Here's the key bit in the post:

But they went ahead with the experiment anyway, starting them off at 600 days old, which is roughly a 60-year-old human. Startlingly, the compound still extends life span, by about 14% in the female mice and 9% in the males. At ages where about 5% of the control mice were still alive, some 20% of the treated mice were still going. That's a very significant result, especially considering the late start. All in all, this looks like the most dramatic mid-to-later lifespan intervention that anyone's ever seen in a mammal. (Caloric restriction, for example, has been basically useless if started at the 600 day mark in mice, and no weight losses were seen here). There's a rapamycin study under way with mice in the prime of rodent life (starting at 270 days), and the preliminary results look quite similar (with again a stronger effect in the females).

The causes of death don't seem to have altered. A good sample of animals from both groups were checked by necropsy, and nothing significant was noted.

Here's the scientific reference on Rapamycin.

Here's the relevant caveat by Derek Lowe:

Are people going to run out and start taking the stuff? It wouldn't surprise me, although I'd have to say that that's a bad idea at the moment. There's an awful lot that we don't understand about the tradeoffs between aging, cancer, and the immune response, and I'd hate to end up on the wrong side of that bet. Jumping straight to humans is too big a leap for now, but remember - there are a lot of other mTOR inhibitors out there in development (try this paper for starters). If we can narrow down which pathways are important for lifespan (and believe me, there are people thinking hard about this right now, especially after this paper), then there could be some very interesting opportunities.