Aging? Take A Pill

Over seven decades, researchers have shown that calorie restriction, or at least a 30-40 percent cut in the normal calorie intake, extends healthy lifespan in multiple species, including mice and rats.

Replicating similar reasons to humans, researchers of a new study offer ways to mimic like effects of low calorie diet in humans, using a pill – perhaps a pill that fights multiple diseases and also activates the body's own anti-aging defense mechanism.

"What we are talking about is potentially having one pill that prevents and even cures many diseases at once," said David Sinclair, lead researcher of the study and an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School.

A biologist best known for his research on the biology of lifespan extension and driving research towards treating diseases of aging, Dr. Sinclair co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to develop drugs that harness the body's own defenses against diseases of aging.

During the course of the study, researchers found that the beneficial effects of calorie restricted diet are triggered by activation of SIRT1- a nuclear protein involved in cellular senescence, a process thought to represent cell aging.

The researchers also found that a reduced calorie intake raised levels of another protein called NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), which in turn triggered SIRT3 and SIRT4 in the mitochondria of the cell. SIRT3 and SIRT4 are members of the sirtuin family of enzymes that protect against cell damage.

By stimulating the mitochondria, SIRT3 and SIRT4 enhanced cell life, by preventing dwindling mitochondria from developing tiny holes in their membranes that allow proteins to seep out into the rest of the cell, thus causing cell death.

Sirtuins, a recently-discovered class of enzymes that promote the body's natural defense against disease, there are seven human sirtuins (SIRT1-7), classed according to their sequence of amino acids.

A biopharmaceutical company, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is already working on the drug that imitates certain beneficial health effects of calorie restriction, without requiring a change in eating habits, by activation of sirtuins. The experimental pill - SRT501 is already in the Phase 2a trials in patients suffering from Type-2 diabetes.