On Rapamycin's Detrimental Effects
Rapamycin extends life in mice via mechanisms that seem at least somewhat complementary to those of calorie restriction, but it isn't the sort of thing you'd want to take haphazardly given the other effects it has. Its primary use in medical practice is as an immunosuppressant, for example. Research teams have made inroads in splitting out the bad from the good, but there's a way to go there yet.
The evolutionarily conserved target of rapamycin (TOR) signaling controls growth, metabolism, and aging. In the first robust demonstration of pharmacologically-induced life extension in mammals, longevity was extended in mice treated with rapamycin, an inhibitor of mechanistic TOR (mTOR). However, detrimental metabolic effects of rapamycin treatment were also reported, presenting a paradox of improved survival despite metabolic impairment. How rapamycin extended lifespan in mice with such paradoxical effects was unclear.Here we show that detrimental effects of rapamycin treatment were only observed during the early stages of treatment. These effects were reversed or diminished in mice treated for 20 weeks, with better metabolic profiles, increased oxygen consumption and ketogenesis, and markedly enhanced insulin sensitivity. Thus, prolonged rapamycin treatment lead to beneficial metabolic alterations, consistent with life extension previously observed. Our findings provide a likely explanation of the "rapamycin paradox" and support the potential causal importance of these metabolic alterations in longevity.