Medicine For Longer Lifespan
Since time immemorial, people have wanted to extend their lifespans. But it is
difficult to find drugs that would do this. Drugs aimed at chronic diseases tend to be
expensive and fail to improve quality of life suratkhabar, while those focusing on prevention or
extending lifespan are often shunned by drug companies due to lengthy trial times
and high costs.
A new drug in New Zealand may finally give us the medicine for longer lifespan we
have been waiting for. It combines two different senolytic drugs which kill off
senescent cells, known to clog up the cells that form the tissues and organs of aging
mammals.
Researchers from the Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland have shown
that administering this drug to healthy middle-aged mice (one year) for a prolonged
period increases their lifespan by an average of ten percent bringing it up to around
three years. It’s the first successful trial in which this approach has been used to
combat aging.
The findings are published in Nature Ageing and suggest that this drug, currently
used to treat cancer, may have a key role in boosting longevity by activating the
UPRmt pathway. This is a critical regulator of autophagy, which helps cells detach
and discard waste and dead cells.
It is thought that UPRmt declines during aging, which contributes to the progression
of disease and reduced healthspan. Identifying drugs that activate this pathway
could therefore provide new approaches to enhancing longevity and improving the
quality of life, says Dr Nir Barzilai, from the Institute for Ageing in New York.
Longevity and healthspan research has focused on identifying the biological
pathways involved in aging and the onset of age-related diseases, such as diabetes,
heart disease, and cancer. It also aims to determine which alterations in these
processes can extend life expectancy without altering the onset of morbidity.
One promising class of anti-aging drugs is rapamycin, a type of immunosuppressant
drug which has been found to increase lifespan in yeast, worms and mice. Although
there have been no trials in humans, the effects of rapamycin in animals are similar
to those of metformin, the most commonly prescribed diabetes medicine.
This is because rapamycin inhibits a protein called mTOR, which is responsible for
sensing the level of nutrients in cells. It’s also thought that calorie restriction – which
is the common strategy of trying to live longer by eating less – can affect this
pathway as well, causing the cells to shift into an energy-conserving state.
There are two main types of rapamycin drugs in development for human testing:
everolimus and acarbose. Earlier trials of everolimus showed it was a modest life-
extension agent, increasing maximum and median lifespan by between 4 and 8 per
cent in males, but not in females. The most recent study found that acarbose
produced better results in males, extending lifespan by 29%.
The ITP is still in progress, and it is too early to say whether acarbose or everolimus
will be the next big longevity drug in human testing. Nevertheless, the ITP has
delivered impressive results.