In the quest for longevity, a new study proposes a novel pathway to extend life. In an animal study, researchers found that mice given a drug to inhibit a protein associated with aging lived nearly 25% longer and were less likely to develop cancer than mice in the control group.
While the results do not immediately translate to the human body, researchers are eager to continue discovering what contributes to accelerated aging and how to reduce the risk of early death.
The study, published in the journal Nature last month, examined how a protein called interleukin-11 (IL-11) impacts aging. According to the study, the amount of this protein increases as we age, which can contribute to inflammation, a key hallmark of aging, and increase the risk for chronic conditions and earlier death. The study, conducted by researchers from Duke–NUS Medical School in Singapore, Imperial College London, and MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences, engineered mice to not build up this protein and, in another experiment, gave middle-aged mice a drug to reduce the buildup of this protein.
In both cases, the mice lived longer, had better metabolism and muscle function, and less frailty; Male and female mice who did not create the protein lived on average 24.9% longer. A drug inhibiting IL-11 extended male mice lifespan by 22.5% and female mice lifespan by 25%.
“Our data suggest that anti-IL-11 therapy, which has a reassuring safety profile … is a potentially translatable approach for extending human healthspan and lifespan,” the researchers conclude.
What this drug might mean for humans
Early human trials on people with fibrotic lung disease are using therapies that subdue the IL-11 protein, per the study. However, more robust research is needed to see how a drug inhibiting IL-11 can extend human life and to what extent this would be implemented at scale.
“Although our work was done in mice, we hope that these findings will be highly relevant to human health, given that we have seen similar effects in studies of human cells and tissues,” Anissa Widjaja, the study author and a professor from Duke-NUS Medical School, tells the BBC in a recent interview. “This research is an important step toward better understanding ageing and we have demonstrated, in mice, a therapy that could potentially extend healthy ageing.”
Most promising is that these results suggest that not only could a drug inhibiting the IL-11 protein extend life span but health span too, the number of years we live in good health.
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