Interventions Testing Program Results for Rapamycin and Arcabose in Combination

The Interventions Testing Program (ITP) at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) performs rigorous, expensive assessments of the ability of various (usually pharmaceutical) interventions to slow aging in mice. Conducting a study with rigor in this context means the use of large numbers of mice spread across multiple facilities, with careful control of the environment in order to minimize both known and unknown confounding factors in life span studies. Most of the interventions tested over the past twenty years of the ITP, on the basis of earlier studies suggesting that they may slow aging, in fact fail to extend life in mice once put under this degree of scrutiny. This outcome says something about the difficulty of robustly determining whether or not any given approach actually slows aging to a great enough degree to be useful. We should be suspicious of any single study in mice. Today's open access paper is an update from the ITP, outlining the results from some of their recent work. It is interesting to note that the ITP is starting, slowly, to test combinations of interventions. There is far too little work taking place in the scientific community when it comes to assessing combinations of treatments that impact aging. Yet since degenerative aging comprises many distinct, very different processes, any effective approach must necessarily combine different interventions targeting different mechanisms. The ITP has not yet branched out from dietary supplements an...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs