Methuselah Foundation Newsletter for November 2010
I'd neglected to mention that the Methuselah Foundation newsletter for November was posted a couple of weeks ago: "A year ago Methuselah Foundation presented a special Mprize Lifespan Achievement Award to Z. Dave Sharp for his work with rapamycin. By the end of the year Science, Nature and TIME magazines each featured rapamycin - an antibiotic used in transplant patients that extended the life span of aged mice - as one of the most significant and exciting scientific breakthroughs of 2009. At our 2009 presentation at the Friar's Club in New York City, Dave told us a funny (after the fact) story about how the experiment ended up being done on old mice. Basically, by the time they figured out how to sneak the rapamycin into the mice food, the mice had gotten old. But three labs were on stand-by, set to start so they proceeded - making the results all the more remarkable. Rapamycin reversed aging! Now Dave has informed us that a second entire replication of the life span study has been repeated with the same results. This time the mice started taking rapamycin at nine months of age. That makes a total of SIX independent replications of the experiment!" The newsletter also provides updates on several of the Foundation's present projects and investments, such as organ printing startup Organovo.
Link: http://blog.methuselahfoundation.org/2010/11/methuselah_foundation_newsletter_november_2010.html