Want to live forever? Or, alternatively, would you like to age well and healthy? Well, you can if you're a mouse. If, however, you are not a mouse that has mastered to ability to read blogs on Google and are a simple human being like myself, while there is still some time before anti-aging drugs become a possibility, there are some promising developments. Anti-Aging drugs may actually be a reality for the future as the current development of anti-aging compounds that Australian and US researchers have studied, have discovered a key breakthrough that saw the aging process reversed in mice.
Exciting stuff.
This study discovered a possible way of restoring the efficiency of cells that would enable the reversal of the aging process in muscles. What occurred in the experiment is as follows: two-year-old mice were given a compound over a week,which resulted in moving back certain key indicators of ageing to that of a six-month-old mouse. This can be seen as the equivalent of an 60-year-old feeling more like a 20-year-old. This research has been concentrated on the area of cells, mitochondria, an place of which energy is produced from respiration. Over time, the communication between the mitochondria and the cell nucleus degrades, which leads to the aging process. Researchers have injected a chemical called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide - NAD - which reduces in the body as we age. The addition of this compound results in a radical reversal in the aging of mice.
Trials on humans are hoped to begin as soon as next year, with researchers confident that side-effects will be minimal due to the fact that the compound NAD is a naturally produced product. This possible advancement of biomedical science into age reversal could be used to treat diseases such as cancer, dementia and diabetes. Therefore, ant-aging research goals are not to enable people to live forever but for people to remain healthy longer into old age; a current issue as older people are now living much longer.
Another advancement in this field has been explored in the tests on yeast, worms and mice who have all been treated with various chemical compounds in laboratory tests that have led to their living longer. As trials in humans have failed, reseachers are not proposing a different approach to animal testing: trials in pet dogs. Their target is rapamycin, which has been used clinically as part of an anti-rejection drug cocktail after kidney transplants in order prevent the body from rejecting its new organ. However, rapamycin has also shown promising results in extending the lives of mice by 13 percent in females and 9 percent in males.
This compound has yet to be tested in human trials due to its cost and the length of time necessary to be taken in order to learn whether the drug can extend a human life. Another issue is that rapamycin is no longer patenable so pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to invest in it. Additionally, the drug may also cause some serious side effects, for example, it has been linked to an increased risk of diabetes in people who have undergone kidney transplants. However, researchers have argued that at low doses, the drug will not be an issue for healthy dogs.
Molecular biologists, Matthew Kaeberlein and Daniel Promislow from the University of Washington have proposed to give low doses of rapamycin to dogs in a study to test whether the drug can extend the animals' lives. The specific dogs to be testsed would be larger dogs that typically live for eight to ten years. Their proposal is that they would start giving the drug to dogs aged six to nine. In a pilot trial that would involve around thirty dogs, where half would receive the drug and their heart function and health measures would be observed. This trial aims to be completed in around three years.
Why dogs?
Scientists argue that pet dogs should provide a more realistic test than lab mice of how the drug would work in humans. In addition to this, pets experience some of the same environmental influences and sometimes get similar age-related diseases as their owners. Again, funding and time are important considerations in trials aiming to understand the mechanism of life-extending effects. As dogs are people's beloved pets, this may also be a later problematic hindrance to these planned trials. It has been considered whether pet owners could be asked to help fund a bigger trial, and whether researchers could promise in return that the pet owners who contribute mean that their dogs would be treated with rapamycin rather than a placebo without compromising the study.
Why Rapamycin?
A protein kinase that controls cell growth and survival, little is actually known about how it can extend life. It is currently used to prevent transplant rejection as it has the ability to suppress the immune system. It characterized as such as by inhibiting the activation and proliferation of T-cells. This occurs by specifically acting on a FK-binding protein 12, commonly referred to as an immunophilin because it binds to immunosuppressive drugs. This complex then binds to a target of rapamycin, a kinase that regulates the progression of the cell cycle. The binding process results in the inhibition of the kinase, disrupts cell division, and hence the proliferation of T-cells - therefore the immune system is repressed.
This diagram shows the process described above: how rapamycin, by acting on a FK-binding protein 12, becomes FKBP12, which in turn, then binds to the rapamycin kinase, mTOR
Additionally, due to the rapamycin kinase activities being implicated in cancer, rapamycin is also investigation for its use in the treatment of these malignancies. Additionally, rapamycin-coated stents, devices used to treat cardiovascular disease by narrowing the blood vessel, has been associated with reducing rates of recurrences of vessel narrowing. As a possible anti-aging drug, as the research in 2009 in mice indicated, the drug's inhibition of the rapamycin kinase is suspected to induce metabolic and stress responses that favour longevity. however, the process of which longevity occurs is still unknown. Other possibilities include retardation of the ageing process itself or preventing age-related diseases.
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