Trolling question:
Does everyone want the Rapamycin dog study to continue because you’re interested in Rapamycin in mammals and humans? Or because you want to help dogs live longer?
3 Likes
Both? Does it have to be an either or? Because for me: both. FWIW, I don’t own a dog, but do like them.
2 Likes
Had not thought about it, but here is my take
I’m going to keep using Rapamycin even without the study, so I guess the only way the study will affect my life is being happier knowing more doggies are getting it 
3 Likes
The first reason. We need to know if it works, we’re never going to get a human lifespan study (and it would be too late for us if one started today), and no “TAME for Rapamycin” is on the horizon.
Just based on mouse studies? Forever?
3 Likes
Are we sure no one is doing that?
Matt K and/or Peter A or perhaps Joanne M should really do one within the ARPA-H PROSPR program. It’s made for this - and is basically asking for it!
We encourage performers to consider trials of the following treatments:
rapamycin, metformin, GLP-1, acyclovir, naltrexone, and somatostatin .
1 Like
Yes - we’d have heard about it from somebody by now. Even TAME has gone nowhere after 8 + years.
It’s very hard to get things funded if they don’t have a patent opportunity. Even more so now with all the funding cuts in biological research.
2 Likes
But that is the thing here. The US Govt via ARPA-H has made the commitment to fund a few trials like this. It was approved both during Biden and then again during Trump admin.
So in this context it’s not a funding question, it’s more that there needs to be a leader putting together a trial design, team and proposal that wins the funding - which rapa seems to have the most/best data for?
I have heard that TAME is applying for this actually.
But is no one doing rapamycin?
Or a combo of rapa and met or acar or sglti2i?
@adssx @Krister_Kauppi - do you of if teams are proposing Rapa/combo?
Would it make sense to see if you contacts would like to go for the funding may be the best and only chance for a real human trial here
2 Likes
You can see the ARPA-H programs that have been announced so far:
Its possible something might be in the works… but I haven’t heard of anything, and some of the program directors were at the Vitalist conference last week and were doing presentations, but no sign of any rapamycin or TAME-like trials.
2 Likes
The funding for this program is confirmed and re-confirmed:
So its lack of Rapamycin proposals or the strength of them that would lead to failure to have a trial this time - not that there is not funding
Could anyone who’s knows Matt K ask him if he could form a consortium?
3 Likes
And yes, it’s on that list:
And
1 Like
I’m not sure there is enough funding in these individual programs for the TAME type of trials; I think TAME was looking for something like $80 million+ just for metformin. I’m not sure how much is allocated to each program, but they referenced some other programs being funded at up to $55 Million.
2 Likes
Not sure
o3 says
No preset dollar cap. The FAQ states that The budget submitted should be representative of the costs required to perform the work proposed. There is not a budget cap or expected range for each Technical Area.
And
Past ARPA-H programs with similar scope have landed up to $100M+ per award.
2 Likes
Honestly, if TAME opened the study up with another option - allowing people to pay for themselves to be included in the study - I think they could get funded easily. There are a lot of older folks who would want to live longer with enough cash to buy a several-year supply of Metformin. Adopt a pay-to-participate option!
4 Likes
I agree, but I suspect that would be unethical in some ways, and could massively bias the study (i.e. you recruit wealthier people who have lots of spare time and are overly health-conscious). And the question is - would people buy in just to end up in the placebo group and never know the results (because they’ll be dead)?
2 Likes
I’m sure it’d be easy to find people who are healthy and would prefer not to take medicine like Metformin. But you’d probably have to pay for people to be in this group as they’d have to have some incentive to stay in and report. It wouldn’t be unethical as these people would never want to take the medication in the first place.
In fact, most lay people I know view taking medicine as a sign of weakness and prefer to rely solely on diet, exercise, sleep, yada yada… That is until something breaks.
1 Like
Yes, a frequent brag is “I take no drugs!” I always respond with outraged “well why the hell not!”, and then you find out they have high cholesterol and BP and so on, but “feel fine”, so claim they don’t need any drugs, as drugs are only prescribed to line the pockets of doctors. I tell them I wish I could take more drugs, but it’s hard to find good ones, if there were more I’d gratefully take more - do they know by any chance of good drugs that verifiably return brain tissue to a more youthful state the way lipid lowering drugs do for arteries and the CV tissue? I’d love to take those drugs, just point me to them! Give me more drugs, please, as I’m sadly on only a few… still can’t even get my A1c to where I want it, and other than sglt2i, the other drugs available for insulin sensitivity all have issues. Oh well.
2 Likes
@Neo @RapAdmin Thanks for the highlight and if this opportunity exists then we need to try to take it. I will email Matt and see if he knows something about it. I think AgelessRx could also be interested in doing this trial and thanks to their lessons learned from their previous rapamycin trials I think they are a good leader for this potential trial. @szalzala what do you think?
2 Likes