A Drug to Extend Life - Rapamycin May Be the Fountain of Youth

My optimism for extending healthy human life went up a few notches in 2009 when the results of the testing of rapamycin came out. This was a major event in anti-aging research that could have implications for longevity and rejuvenation.

Rapamycin is the first pharmaceutical known to extend healthy life in mice. Mice are genetically similar to humans, so what is good for the mouse might be good for the man (and woman). This study came about as a result of happenstance. Two chance events lead to a discovery that may change the face of old age.

Back in the 1980s Dr. Z. Dave Sharp of the University of Texas, San Antonio heard of an experiment done in Switzerland, unrelated to aging, using rapamycin. He had a hunch that this immunosuppressant drug might work to extend life; it appeared to affect cell growth in lab animals in much the same way as calorie restriction, already proven to extend life. It was an idea he carried around for many years, nobody was interested.

Almost 20 years later a conversation with a colleague turned his hunch into a full-fledged experiment. It was 2004 and Intervention Testing Program of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) was newly formed. Founded by Huber Warner who realized. "I saw lots of papers from grantees of the NIA about slowing down aging and expending lifespan but they were rarely backed up and given credibility through testing." Huber realized that a focused program was needed so that more than one lab was confirming whether an intervention works. He proposed the idea to the NIA that led to the Intervention Testing Program.

ITP generally selects studies based on treatments that are easily obtainable, reasonably priced and delivered in the food of the mice. The research is conducted in three labs, chosen by ITP, to conduct the tests with mice: University of Michigan, Jackson Laboratories in Maine and University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio - the same University where Dave Sharp is based.

It was this Program that took Dave's ideas from concept to reality with efficiency and credibility. Dave mentioned his idea to Randy Strong, the head of the lab at San Antonio and Randy liked it. He encouraged Dave to put in a proposal for testing. It was approved in 2005.

Things got a little complicated after that. The mice were ready to go but early tests showed that the rapamycin in the mice food lost its potency. Randy worked fast and furiously with Purina to find a solution, and he did. The rapamycin was encapsulated to preserve its strength and be released in the intestines of the mice. This was a novel delivery method.

At this point the mice were getting old, about 600 days old - the equivalent of 60 year old humans. The researchers had to decide if they wanted to proceed; it was too late to replace the nearly 2,000 genetically similar mice that were ready to go. Luckily they did.

The results were beyond anything they could have hoped for. Rapamycin delayed the deaths of the longest-lived male mice by 101 days and the longest-lived female mice by 151 days. That is similar to 13 human years! Or, when you take into account the average remaining lifespan when the treatment began, it is an increase of 38% in female mice and 28% in males.

How rapamycin works remains unclear. It may impact cellular efficiency with the result of delaying aging and preserving good health. The results do not show that the drug prevented any single disease, the mice died of various causes, but they do show that aging was slowed. The mice remained healthy and cancer free longer than any normal life expectancy.

Intervention Testing Program tests have been conducted with aspirin, green tea extract and other interventions. The results with rapamycin are the first major breakthrough from an ITP study, with strong results in rejuvenation and extended lifespan in both male and female mice.

It remains to be seen what impact this will have for humans but the very idea that a drug - an immunosuppressant used for transplant patients, discovered in Easter Island soil samples about 40 years ago - might give us all a longer, healthier life is good news!

Dave Gobel is the founder and CEO of Methuselah Foundation. http://www.methuselahfoundation.org Dave founded the nonprofit in an effort to reverse or preempt the damage of aging and the unimaginable suffering it continues to inflict. He is voraciously curious, a serial entrepreneur, an unrepentant do-gooder, and a technology visionary who has conceived many breakthrough technologies and then gone on to found or co-found private and venture capital backed companies and non-profits built for the purpose of delivering those same technologies.

Merle Benny is a writer and friendraiser for the Methuselah Foundation. She brings many years of nonprofit and marketing experience to the organization.

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