The more we dive into the use of Rapamycin and other mTOR inhibitors, the more we identify the many unanswered questions around how best to optimize the use of the drug for longevity, and how best to translate the animal research into truly useable knowledge (translational research) for human use, and clinical application.
So - I’m creating this thread for everyone’s use, as a way for us to “crowdsource” some biology of aging research ideas in areas that we have a unique perspective on; how we can best translate the current lab / animal science into something that we is much more useable and beneficial for people using these medications. I’m thinking this might be a way to spur on an increase in translational biology of aging research that is desperately needed right now. I also find it helpful to identify clearly where the gaps are in our knowledge, which is important as we use these medications and track the impact on our biological / blood measurements and make adjustments.
When we start getting more ideas here - I’ll start publicizing it to the mouse/rapamycin and geroscience researchers and perhaps our ideas from our “in the trenches” use of rapamycin, can help stimulate more ideas and studies for the researchers to focus on and get funding for.
With the vast amount of funding starting to flow into biology of aging ($1 Billion per year just from the Saudi Government / MBS and friends) - it seems that since we are the closes of anyone to translating all the research into use, that perhaps we can help drive the research by pointing out key areas of missing data that we think needs to be done.
So - Please post your ideas for studies here. Keep each post to a single study topic area so that we can also effectively “vote” on each research concept by “liking” the post. Then the researchers can also see what we think might be the priority of each of these issues, as they consider them and also when they try to justify the study to their IRB, and the funding review boards.
I’m thinking (but I’m open to feedback from others) that a general layout for the Study Idea Proposals would be based on the general outline that is being used in the VitaDAO Funding Proposals - see example of successful VitaDAO Longevity proposal here. Of course, my rationale is that by doing this we make the use of our ideas more easily adopted by researchers who could make proposals to groups like VitaDAO or the Impetus Grants.
So - to keep it simple, something like this:
Summary of Study: A general overview of the study
Key Problem Study Would Address: (what is the exact problem that we are encountering that drives the need for this study)
Opportunities: Additional benefits of the study that could be realized.