Sirtris Pharmaceuticals announces that its souped-up version of resveratrol has passed early tests in humans.
What if I told you there was a pill that slows aging and allows you to live a healthy life to age 100?
Such a pill may exist right now. It's being tested in people in very early-stage human clinical trials. Today, the company making the pill, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, announced its findings from preclinical testing in cells and animals, and also from tests conducted on 85 male volunteers this summer.
The verdict: so far, the pill works, although it will be years before we know how well it works, or if it can actually extend the life span of people in the same way that it has bumped up the life span of mice.
Speaking today at the Annual Metabolic Diseases Drug Discovery and Development World Summit in San Diego, Sirtris's senior director of biology, Jill Milne, announced that the drug, SRT501, reduces glucose and improves insulin sensitivity in animal and in vitro studies of the drug's effect on type 2 diabetes. In people, the drug was tested for dose, safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics--that is, how well the drug was absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and removed from the body.
Phase 1b trials are already under way to test safety and pharmacokinetics on patients with type 2 diabetes. Later-phase trials will test to see if the drug actually works in diabetics.
SRT501 is a proprietary chemical developed by Sirtris that's based on the naturally occurring resveratrol that company cofounder David Sinclair of Harvard University has been studying for its effects in extending life span in a number of organisms, including yeast, flies, and mice. Last year, Sinclair created a sensation when he published a paper in Nature detailing how mice on a high-fat diet that were fed large doses of resveratrol were as healthy as mice on a regular diet. Resveratrol also sharply extended life span, produced positive changes in insulin sensitivity and other diabetes-preventing mechanisms, and increased energy production in cells. The mice were given very high doses of resveratrol--22 milligrams per kilogram of weight. In comparison, a liter of red wine delivers 1.5 to 3 milligrams. To match the results in the mice, a 150-pound human would need to drink 750 to 1,500 bottles of wine a day.
Sinclair says that SRT501 is a thousand times more potent than naturally occurring resveratrol, which gives it the same punch as the resveratrol in all those bottles of wine.
Sinclair believes that resveratrol activates a gene called SIRT-1, which is associated with the regulation of life span in several animals. This contention is disputed by some critics: they argue that the mechanism by which resveratrol works is still poorly understood.
Because humans are so long-lived, SRT501 can't be easily tested for longevity in humans--nor does the Food and Drug Administration recognize "increased life span" as an allowable indication for an approved drug. This is why Sirtris is testing SRT501 for diseases related to aging, such as type 2 diabetes. However, should the drug be approved for diabetes, it will undoubtedly be used to extend life span by many people without diabetes.
The drug still has years of testing to go and faces many hurdles. It may not work. But if it does, the consequences will be profound. For instance, it will mean that more people will be alive on the earth. Age 90 will be the new 70, and 70 the new 50, with profound impacts on everything from social security to retirement age. It may also mean fewer people with diabetes, Alzheimer's, and some cancers.
Can one pill do and cause all that? Critics have long said no--that such a compound will not work in humans. But they also said it wouldn't work in mice--until it did work. (At least in fat mice.)
So let's sip some pinot noir and wait for more results from Sirtris. After all, we're not getting any younger.
Look for my profile of longevity researcher David Sinclair in the September/October issue of Technology Review.
Sirtris press release
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
gabrielg01
07/19/2007
Posts:418
The price for each individual is small, the potential gain huge. But once you consider the odds, the expected outcome is negative in either case.
who_knows
07/20/2007
Posts:3
Besides, this resveratrol story is not a complete shot in the dark. It is based on good science, although the results are partial.
I'd say take the wager. My 2 cents.
gabrielg01
07/20/2007
Posts:418
However this chemical SRT501, which is supposed to be some sort of "super resveratrol", is not a natural substance and has yet to be proven to be free from side effects. So one has to wait and see.
There are other ways which are already proven to control insulin, such as exercise and a balanced diet. For the moment it might be wiser to stick with that.
rajnz
07/21/2007
Posts:25
My second point is related. Suppose people live to be 100 but have all kinds of problems that prevent them from being productive members of society. Can we afford that? I think we can't; we're already struggling to afford people living to be 80. Alternatively, suppose future octagenarians are like present-day 60-year-olds. Will people be willing to raise the retirement age to 85? That means people will typically have 60-year careers, in an age when technology is changing rapidly and employers have no loyalty. Either most people will find themselves totally outdated and unemployable for the last 20 years of their working life, or else we'll need a national program to retrain 55-year-olds for the second half of their careers.
Another concern is our Constitution. Terms for elected officials, as well as lifelong appointments for judges, were based upon an assumption of an average lifespan of 60 (or thereabouts). I think we would really have to change many of these things.
Similarly, universities might need to scrap the tenure system. In the old days, a mistaken appointment meant having a bad professor for 30 years. Now, that is up to 40 years. What happens if that gets to 60 years?
dmm
07/23/2007
Posts:207
2) We already have this problem, and some people say that it is one of the main causes why the US healthcare system is so expensive and so inefficient. This may be caused by religious fanaticism that champions the “sanctity of life” to absurd levels. We go to the most advanced technological (= financial) extremes for keeping hopelessly sick people alive for mere days or weeks (sometime for years). Sometime we even keep them alive against their own wishes. Meanwhile young people are missing on critical basic healthcare, because the system is prohibitively expensive. This system looks totally lopsided and illogical to me.
3) It is interesting how you come to opposite conclusions on elected official’s terms vs. academic tenure terms, when in fact these are the same problem.
I oppose lengthening political terms. Politicians are already immensely stupid and arrogant with the terms we have now. Imagine what would happen if we lengthen their terms – imagine Bush&Cheney serving 10 year terms. Chilling!
As for the academics, we should have no tenure system to begin with. In fact, there are universities with no tenure system already.
gabrielg01
07/25/2007
Posts:418
But supposing we could overcome all that, and give people truly healthy bodies and brains for 100 or 200 years. It SOUNDS good, but would it really BE good? Would a human MIND hold up well for that long? Let's be honest: what percentage of people are so sweet and wonderful by the age of 75 that you wish they could be around for another 75? And how many geniuses continue to contribute at the genius level past 40?
I'm not arguing that long lifespans would definitely be bad. I'm just saying they might be bad, even at the personal level. The next two points deal with just a couple of the (potentially negative) societal implications.
2. Surprise! Here's one pro-lifer who agrees with you. I am against euthanasia, but I don't see how "taking someone off life support" = "giving someone poison." Yeah, the end result is the same, but if one tries to argue that only the ends are important, not the means, then one is saying, "the ends justify the means."
3. Regardless of how one argues, the point is that if people live to be two (or 3, or 4, or 10) times as old as they did when the Constitution was made, then we should probably re-think some things, such as length of terms, term limits, lifetime appointments, minimum ages, etc.
The reason for my "inconsistency" between Presidential terms and lifetime appointments (like for judges or professors) is that Presidents are already limited to 2 terms of 4 years each. Thus, the maximum time that a President can serve is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of a typical human lifespan. On the other hand, lifetime appointments are becoming a larger and larger percentage of a typical human lifespan.
I can understand your frustration with Bush being President for 8 years. Can you understand my frustration with Ted Kennedy being a senator for 44 years, and Robert Byrd being one for 48 years? (And Strom Thurmond, who I liked but you probably didn't, served for 48 years.) I don't think our Founding Fathers anticipated this. Imagine if people could live to be 120 or 200!
dmm
07/25/2007
Posts:207
2 - I was not talking about euthanasia. I was just advocating for letting people die when their time is up. Keeping an 85-old with metastasized cancer alive for 1-2 more months is a futile, wasteful and arguably a cruel practice.
3 - I disagree. Just because we live longer, we should not make political terms longer. Additionally, we should also limit the term numbers for other political offices as well. No one should hold the same office for half a century. Talk about entrenched interests! Kennedy, Thurmond and others like them are aberrations, and a clear example of how screwed up the system is.
gabrielg01
07/26/2007
Posts:418
gs
07/26/2007
Posts:1
mdwriter
07/07/2009
Posts:1
I'm happy to see it here.
Worldpeace,
Benjamin
Worldpeace
07/30/2007
Posts:1
Jason Pontin
Editor in Chief
Technology Review
jpontin
07/31/2007
Posts:25
ChrisMohrSr
04/02/2008
Posts:1
debbie888
04/12/2009
Posts:2
1). you are born
2). you Grow up
3). you reproduce
4). you die
If this Pill Can work and Keep Humans Reproducing say to the age of 70 who wants kids at that age?
that is if women actually continued to ovulate at that age. men on the other hand can even at present can possibly father a child at 70 easily. although the child maybe defective?
Anyway though my point is this if we are productive meaning reproductive then nature has a reason for us to exist. When that stops so should our lives according to nature. Now if we are going to live these long lives it would be nice if we would just fade and wither like a flower over night. Even in the movie Logans run when you hit age 30 and your watch has turned black you go to carnival and are evaporated, While you are still viable and before you suffer the procsess of aging and dementia. Maybe we could have a system that if you haven't been able to preform as a human then in say 60 days or so given for illness. your watch turns black. and your doctor directs you to step into the distinigration room and evaporate.? Still fairly healthy.
spaceinvader...
11/09/2009
Posts:1