ACE Inhibition Extends Life in Nematodes

This is an illustrative example of the continued exploration of modest life extension via metabolic manipulation in short-lived animals. A lot of effort is spent on sifting through the existing catalog of known and approved drugs for those that might impact life span, something I consider to be a waste of time and effort from the point of view of producing therapies to extend life in humans. It is an important part of purely scientific efforts to map the interaction of metabolism and aging, however: To identify drugs that delay age-related degeneration, we used the powerful Caenorhabdtitis elegans model system to screen for FDA-approved drugs that can extend the adult lifespan of worms. Here we show that captopril extended mean lifespan. Captopril is an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor used to treat high blood pressure in humans. To explore the mechanism of captopril, we analyzed the acn-1 gene that encodes the C. elegans homolog of ACE. Reducing the activity of acn-1 extended the mean life span. Furthermore, reducing the activity of acn-1 delayed age-related degenerative changes and increased stress resistance, indicating that acn-1 influences aging. Captopril could not further extend the lifespan of animals with reduced acn-1, suggesting they function in the same pathway; we propose that captopril inhibits acn-1 to extend lifespan. To define the relationship with previously characterized longevity pathways, we analyzed mutant animals. The lifespan extension c...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs