In the effort to find a way to prolong human life, the researches are pulling no punches – or in other words, testing every anti-aging drug imaginable. The Interventions Testing Program (ITP), which has been running for decades has been rejuvenated and is in active search for new compounds to explore after inflow of funds.
What is the ITP?
The Interventions Testing Program, ITP for short, is run prudently by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) for the past 22 years and one of its goals over the years driven by the search for a simple compound is to find something to prolong the life span of mice- hoping humans will be able to benefit from this information once science advances enough to allow it.
How Does It Work?
Every year, the program takes a cue on 6-8 promising compounds that should be subjected to tests. These are given to a sizeable population of genetically assorted mice bearing the treatments concurrently in three different institutions. They are monitored for their entire lifespan to habilitate the testing of the compounds’ possibilities to prolong life.
What Have They Found So Far?
The breadth of the ITP has seen over 60 compounds tested over years. Although most of these commercially popular nutritional anti ageing elements such as resveratrol and fish oil have proved fruitless in delivering benefits some rather interesting exceptions surfaced.
- Rapamycin: This drug is used to treat organ transplant rejection, but it is the most effective drug for mouse life extension.
- Canagliflozin: It is a medication used in the treatment of diabetes, which is claimed to have encouraging results.
- 17 alpha-estradiol: It is an estrogen that seems to be effective The End
What’s Next?
The program has also recently added eight new compounds for evaluation among new testing compounds such as sildenafil citrate (Viagra) and captopril (an antihypertensive agent). With new solid basic funding of over $5 million per year for the next 5 years, age-defying drug searches are not ending anytime soon.
Challenges Ahead
If this research is so promising, then there is also a lot of work to be done in order to use these findings in human treatments. The problem is that the FDA does not consider aging to be an illness, so it is pretty impossible to, for example, set and complete the necessary studies to register an anti-aging medicine.
But in spite of such odds, all the researchers want to take the chance. As Dr. Richard Miller, one of the principal investigators, says: “We must go on looking for blockbuster drugs, but we have gradually come to the understanding that this is stuck.”
The search for human longevity on the gone mice continues.
