Rapamycin: Extends Life in Mice, But Of Any Youth to Humans?

摘要

Wired magazine and the journal Science both picked it as one of the top breakthroughs of 2009, and now Science Watch can confirm that the discovery that an antibiotic can prolong the life of laboratory mice is indeed a very hot topic. David Harrison of The Jackson Laboratory in Maine and a team of collaborators reported in Nature in July 2009 that rapamycin fed to mice increased their lifespan. More remarkable yet, the rapamycin regime did not start until the mice were already 600 days old, "roughly the equivalent of a 60-year-old person," according to the team, whose paper is at #3 in the Hot Topics list.