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The discovery has implications for the treatment of several diseases—as well as normal aging in healthy people. The drug rapamycin has been found to reverse the effects of Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a fatal genetic disease that resembles rapid aging, in cells taken from patients with the disease. Rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug used to prevent rejection of transplanted organs, has already been shown to extend life span in healthy mice. Researchers hope the findings will provide new insight into treating progeria as well as other age-related diseases. Skin cells from patients with progeria show a slew of defects: deformities in their...

Bacterial Product Isolated in Soil from Easter Island Rescues Learning, Memory in Alzheimer's Mouse Model Rapamycin, a drug that keeps the immune system from attacking transplanted organs, may have another exciting use: fighting Alzheimer's disease. The drug -- a bacterial product first isolated in soil from Easter Island -- rescued learning and memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, a team from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio reported on Feb. 23. The study, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, offers the first evidence that the drug is able to reverse Alzheimer's-like deficits in an...

Rapamycin proves mettle in second model of memory-robbing diseaseSAN ANTONIO (April 1, 2010) — If research results continue to be repeated and are turned into clinical trials, a drug already approved for some uses could be marshaled — sooner than we expect — to prevent Alzheimer's disease in humans and improve health to the end of life. A few weeks after a report that rapamycin, a drug that extends lifespan in mice and that is currently used in transplant patients, curbed the effects of Alzheimer's disease in mice, a second group is announcing similar results in an entirely different mouse...

Could a pill one day slow ageing in humans?Punchstock Rapamycin, a drug commonly used in humans to prevent transplanted organs from being rejected, has been found to extend the lives of mice by up to 14% — even when given to the mice late in life. In flies and worms, drug treatments have been shown to prolong lifespan, but until now, the only robust way to extend life in mammals has been to heavily restrict diet. The researchers caution, however, that using this drug to extend the lifespan of humans might be problematic because it suppresses the immune system —...