Drug Has the Ability to Help Animals Live Longer and Healthier; Could Help Humans

Researchers at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University found a drug that imitates the effect of dietary restriction, which enables one to live longer and healthier. They tested the drug on animals to prove its beneficial effects.

Rapamycin is an antibiotic, immunosuppressant, and a type of serine/threonine kinase inhibitor that was approved by the FDA 15 years ago. According to the National Cancer Institute, it is used to keep the body from rejecting organ and bone marrow transplants, block certain white blood cells that can reject foreign tissues and organs, and block a protein that is involved in cell division.

In experiments with laboratory mice, the researchers found that those receiving the rapamycin revealed telling characteristics: the mice had reduced the age-dependent decline in spontaneous activity, demonstrated more fitness, improved cognition and cardiovascular health, had less cancer, and lived substantially longer than mice fed a normal diet.

"It could provide a way not only to increase lifespan but to address some age-related diseases and improve general health," said Viviana Perez, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the OSU College of Science, in a news release. "We might find a way for people not only to live longer, but to live better and with a higher quality of life."

Rapamycin was found to serve as a metabolic signaler that inhibits a biological pathway associated with helping an organism avoid too much cellular expansion and growth when energy supplies are insufficient. This helps improve one's dietary restriction, which is the only proven approach to slow the aging process and live a healthy life. The pathway that rapamycin inhibits is called "mammalian target of rapamycin," or mTOR.

However, rapamycin has its drawbacks. It can increase insulin resistance (causing diabetes) and can also allow the buildup of fatty acids; both witnessed in both animals and humans. But in further lab tests, the researchers found that when rapamycin was coupled with metformin, these side effects were negated.

The Oregon State University researchers' study, "Rapamycin and Dietary Restriction Induce Metabolically Distinctive Changes in Mouse Liver," was published in the Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, and can be found here. The researchers hope to conduct more work on the subject to arrive at more definitive answers for humans.