No scientific advances inspire more media hype than ones in gerontology, the study of aging. However, biologists aren’t so easily wowed. Before the mid-1990s they generally saw gerontology as a dismal bog where once-promising peers sank out of sight. The compelling logic that underlay this dismissiveness: Natural selection has sculpted our genes to care about getting to the next generation—not about keeping our bodies youthful for a long time. Thus, soon after we reach reproductive age, our genes’ preservative influence fades, and escalating random damage sets in. Studying the details of this chaotic decay has seemed a waste of time to most life scientists. And attempting to block or slow it has seemed utterly like fighting windmills.
One of Stipp’s interesting stories re people and research: Andrzei Bartke (endocrine researcher at Southern Illinois University ) and researcher Kevin Flurkey (of The Jackson Laboratory in Maine) conferred with each other’s research data on Ames dwarfs (mice whose growth is stunted by a mutation which curtails the production of growth hormone) versus Snell dwarfs (mutant mice nearly identical to Ames dwarfs) respectively; and eventually they concluded that the growth hormone deficiency did boost their dwarfs’ longevity. Bartke and Flurkey wound up extending the gerontogene revolution to mammals, and now more than a half dozen gene mutations are known to boost mouse longevity.
While it is not known whether human gerontogenes exist, the mouse discoveries argue that an ancient, evolutionarily conserved anti-aging module is likely embedded in our genomes that could dramatically extend our healthy life span IF cleverly tweaked with drugs.
Last year another landmark mouse study gave an exciting hint that the module is coming into view. Researchers showed for the first time that a drug could convincingly extend life span in mammals. This drug—repamycin (a compound that can control the production of cell protein, among other attributes)– inhibits mTOR, a gene found in all mammals, suggesting that it may be a key part of an anti-aging module that can be readily manipulated. Rapamycin is a medicine prescribed to prevent rejection of transplanted organs. Despite its reputation as an immune inhibitor, earlier studies with worms and flies suggested that it might mimic the anti-aging effects of calorie restriction—a curtailing of food intake that has long been known to brake aging in rodents and other species. (This drug has some nasty side effects, but in small doses seems to activate TOR’s benefits). And when researchers at three different US labs gave it to late-middle-aged mice, the results were stunning. The life expectancy of the aged males was boosted by 28% and that of females by 38 percent.
It will take a lot more work to translate this discovery into safe, effective anti-aging medicines, but knee-jerk skeptics who routinely dismiss anti-aging research as the “Deepwater Horizon” of snake oil are now on very shaky ground. In fact, even before the rapamycin breakthrough, a group of prominent authorities on aging including the late Robert Butler, founding director of the National Institute on Aging, had publicly stated that it now seems “realistically achievable” to develop anti-aging drugs that can delay the onset of all age-related diseases by about seven years. If widely used, such drugs might boost life expectancy by a similar amount.
David Stipp, in his book’s final chapter, “The George Burns Scenario”, tells you that the data on probable agents (resveratrol, rapamycin, and some other compounds), while highly promising, haven’t reached an actionable level for him personally. He would be willing to take such compounds before they’ve been rigorously vetted in the kind of clinical trials required for FDA approval of drugs (which he doubts will happen for many years, if ever), but he is reluctant to do so until enough clinical data are available to let him make a reasonably well-informed decision about optimal dosing (i. e., after phase two of the three phase clinical testing) . . . . In this chapter he also responds to the “greedy geezers” and the apologists and discusses health-care spending as an investment. The pharmaceutical industry doesn’t care about aging; it’s not a disease. Other possibilities of funding?
The most mind-blowing chapter for this author was “Sirtris, Master Voyager of the Vortex.” This is where Stipp does a thorough exploration of characters and events involving Sitris Pharmaceuticals, founder and venture capitalist Christoph Westfall, later joined by Dr. David Sinclair, the Sirtris staff and associates, the products under research, and the sale of Sitris to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million. How does a journalist get this good?. If you are interested in following his writings further, here is his blog: www.davidstipp.com