OMEN
07-10-2009, 01:00 PM
SCIENTISTS say they have discovered a wonder drug that could help people live up to ten years longer.
Rapamycin is a bacterial product found in soil samples on remote Easter Island in the South Pacific.
It works by inhibiting a protein called TOR that plays a key role in cell growth.
Rapamycin is widely used to stop transplant patients rejecting their new organs. Now tests on 600-day-old mice - equivalent to 60-year-old humans - have shown it also extends life expectancy by up to 14 per cent.
Female mice with rapamycin added to their food lived 13 per cent longer on average compared with non-rapamycin counterparts. Males which were fed the drug gained nine per cent in their lifetime.
The change was even more striking among the 10 per cent of mice that lived longest. Within this group, rapamycin females lived 38 per cent longer and rapamycin males 28 per cent longer than non-rapamycin counterparts.
Rapamycin has implications for treatment and prevention of age-related diseases, but has no impact on the causes of death itself, the study, published in the British science journal Nature said.
Previous work on rapamycin longevity was carried out on yeast, worms and flies. This study is the first to show it also appears to work on mammals.
Arlan Richardson, director of the Barshop Institute, one of three centres that carried out the experiments said: "I've been in ageing research for 35 years and there have been many so-called anti-ageing interventions over those years that were never successful.
"I never thought we could find an anti-ageing pill for people in my lifetime. However, rapamycin shows a great deal of promise to do just that."
Oxford University researcher Dr Lynne Cox said: "This is very exciting. Whether it's sensible to increase lifespan is another matter - perhaps increasing health span might be a better goal."
But Dr Matt Kaeberlein and Dr Brian Kennedy, of Washington University in Seattle, said healthy people should not take rapamycin to slow ageing because it cuts immunity to disease.
Despite the rush of optimism sparked by the discovery, "extending human lifespan with a pill remains the purview of science-fiction writers for now", they said.
With AFP and The Sun
Rapamycin is a bacterial product found in soil samples on remote Easter Island in the South Pacific.
It works by inhibiting a protein called TOR that plays a key role in cell growth.
Rapamycin is widely used to stop transplant patients rejecting their new organs. Now tests on 600-day-old mice - equivalent to 60-year-old humans - have shown it also extends life expectancy by up to 14 per cent.
Female mice with rapamycin added to their food lived 13 per cent longer on average compared with non-rapamycin counterparts. Males which were fed the drug gained nine per cent in their lifetime.
The change was even more striking among the 10 per cent of mice that lived longest. Within this group, rapamycin females lived 38 per cent longer and rapamycin males 28 per cent longer than non-rapamycin counterparts.
Rapamycin has implications for treatment and prevention of age-related diseases, but has no impact on the causes of death itself, the study, published in the British science journal Nature said.
Previous work on rapamycin longevity was carried out on yeast, worms and flies. This study is the first to show it also appears to work on mammals.
Arlan Richardson, director of the Barshop Institute, one of three centres that carried out the experiments said: "I've been in ageing research for 35 years and there have been many so-called anti-ageing interventions over those years that were never successful.
"I never thought we could find an anti-ageing pill for people in my lifetime. However, rapamycin shows a great deal of promise to do just that."
Oxford University researcher Dr Lynne Cox said: "This is very exciting. Whether it's sensible to increase lifespan is another matter - perhaps increasing health span might be a better goal."
But Dr Matt Kaeberlein and Dr Brian Kennedy, of Washington University in Seattle, said healthy people should not take rapamycin to slow ageing because it cuts immunity to disease.
Despite the rush of optimism sparked by the discovery, "extending human lifespan with a pill remains the purview of science-fiction writers for now", they said.
With AFP and The Sun