Fight Aging!

So what is Sirtris up to these days? The startup was founded to investigate a line of calorie restriction mimetic compounds based on sirtuin biochemistry, and acquired for a very large sum by GlaxoSmithKline. The hope was that something to modestly slow aging would emerge - though even if so, development would be sidelined into making a therapy for diabetes or something similar, as the FDA outright forbids the commercial development of therapies to treat aging. A sad state of affairs in the land once known and the land of the free, to be sure, but it is what is.

Unfortunately for Sirtris, though not for their early investors, little of practical use has so far emerged from their work. It looks very much like the best case end result will indeed be something like a drug candidate to alleviate some of the consequences of obesity, diabetes or metabolic syndrome, all conditions that the vast majority of sufferers could have avoided through leading a healthier lifestyle, and could still reverse by leading a healthier lifestyle. Given the state of the world today, a medicine like that may yet make a great deal of money for GlaxoSmithKline, but it's not going to do anything of significance for human life spans. So, on the whole, the money poured into Sirtris looks like a failure wearing the clothes of success - and the more so because a bunch of people are going to see that researchers and investors made out like bandits from the deal and follow the same path, rather than trying to do something more ambitious and more useful.

Sirtris has been in the news again of late, with the completion of the latest study on the drug candidate SRT1720. This one doesn't appear to do what was originally thought - manipulate sirtuins in beneficial ways - but it does appear to be protective in obese mice. I see more optimism in the press coverage than is merited by the results, I think; a cynic might write that off to the size of the budget and the sophistication of the public relations crew at GlaxoSmithKline.

Longer Lives for Obese Mice, With Hope for Humans of All Sizes

Sustaining the flickering hope that human aging might somehow be decelerated, researchers have found they can substantially extend the average life span of obese mice with a specially designed drug. The drug, SRT-1720, protects the mice from the usual diseases of obesity by reducing the amount of fat in the liver and increasing sensitivity to insulin.

A Drug to Live Longer? Yes! (But Only If You're a Fat Mouse)

In the new study, SRT-1720 appeared to give obese mice the physiology of much leaner animals, which spared them from some of the negative health effects of excess weight. But the scientists note that while these mice lived longer than untreated obese mice, they didn't live nearly as long as untreated, normal-weight animals. Further, when the researchers looked at the maximum life span of the SRT-1720-treated fat mice, it wasn't much different from that of untreated obese mice. That means that the drug may just help animals enjoy more of whatever life they have, rather than actually extending it by any significant amount.