An important effort to find the next rapamycin-like longevity drug:
Ora Biomedical has developed revolutionary new technology that couples robotics with artificial intelligence to automate lifespan and healthspan analyses in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. This technology allows us to quantitatively assess the impact of longevity interventions at a scale three orders of magnitude greater than what is possible today. Our goal: assess 1,000,000 longevity interventions in 5 years. That’s the Million Molecule Challenge.
By sponsoring interventions here, you will be directly contributing to discovery in longevity science. You co-own the data and you can even pick the interventions. Single interventions, combinations of interventions (we love combinations!), even entire targeted libraries. It’s all up to you. Compete against friends and colleagues to see how you stack up on the Longevity Leaderboards. And while you can always opt out, we hope you will consider allowing your sponsored intervention to be deposited into a publicly available longevity database that will be made available to the world, without restriction, catalyzing longevity science into the future.
How does this work?
It’s simple. Ora Biomedical has created a set of interventions you can choose from to sponsor. Just select the interventions you wish to sponsor from the drop-down menu, or you can choose to let fate decide and use our Random Intervention Machine to select your interventions for you. The cost of sponsoring an intervention is $100.
Wow, I can’t believe they had Pentadecanoic Acid Supplement on the list.
They must have tried everything on the list already. Not that many things on there.
Interestingly they have Citric Acid on the list, but none of Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium or Calcium citrate. My view about Citric Acid is that the acid aspect is harmful in the volume of citrate that you need to take to have a good effect. They also don’t have melatonin on the list.
@Bicep and @John_Hemming I have talked to the people on the Ora Biomedical and their current library consist of 2350 FDA approved drugs and some small number of natural compounds. They will expand they library with more drugs and natural compounds. But every such step is an investment.
One investment we are doing in the “Rapamycin Longevity Lab” initiative is to add 200 mTOR inhibitors to the library. You can read more about this initiative here.
I buy citrate in bulk (25kg) (some hydrous some anhydrous) and it costs about GBP 15 per kilo. Obviously smaller quantities would be more expensive per kilo.
In the end, however, I have my own small biohacking trial that is gradually increasing in size so I am not particularly bothered what effect it has on worms. I would pay them a reasonable amount for a test, however.
Citrate is solidly GRAS. When people have a blood transfusion for example, it tends to be infused with sodium citrate which is also used to make Nachos. (the formula is Na₃C₆H₅O₇) Given my experience with eating insane quantities of citrate I wonder sometimes if one of the benefits people get from a blood transfusion arises from the additional gene expression from the citrate.
I see no merit, however, in me giving them funds to test anything else just because the test is cheaper.
They do have C₆H₈O₇ on their list (Citric acid, Citrate plus three separate protons) the main acid in Lemon Juice (and Lime Juice/Grapefruit Juice).
However, I think eating a lot of acid would be something I would not wish to try. Cells deacetylate the histone to increase the pH which would be a really bad thing.
What biohacking trial is it that you refer to? Is it the MN=1 that we talked about?
I don’t see any conflicts with that human trial and large screening in worms. As I see it the screening will open up totally new territories in the longevity field that we have not looked at yet. If we would for example get a really large combination effect of one FDA approved drug and Rapamycin then that combination would be very interesting to do a ITP on and see if the effects also exist there. This way we come step by step closer to human trials and move the field forward.
Curious question, do you see very little value in doing large scale experiments in a cost-effective way where Rapamycin is combined with FDA approved drugs and natural compounds? What would be needed to increase the perceived value for you?
No its not the MN=1 trials that we will be doing via rapamycin news. It could be one of those trials, but as it is my own personal hypothesis I think it best that we start with something else.
I have a small group of people - mainly friends and family - that are following the protocol to improve gene transcription (and translation). I don’t mind if more people join that, but what I have suggested as the first MN=1 trial relates to Rapamycin.
The reason why I personally am not particularly interested in testing lots and lots of molecules is I have a clear mechanistic hypothesis (transcription/translation) where it is clear what you can do that is synergistic and it produces good results. Hence I personally want to focus on this. Rapamycin is part of this because of its effects in mitochondria.
Because we are doing that testing in human beings, therefore, there is a lesser, but non zero merit in having some worm testing.
In the absence of a realistic practical hypothesis the approach of testing very large numbers of molecules has merit and I am not saying to anyone they should not do that. However, my situation is different.
Because I don’t need any funding (I am self funded) and I already have people in my biohacking trial I am not really beating the drum for my protocol. What I need to do is to get on with the testing. It is quite complicated because it is multidimensional and has two main pathways. Hence in transcription there are issues about levels of acetyl-CoA, RNA, HDAC inhibitors and also I think serum Lithium. In translation it is all about mitochondrial efficiency, but a lot affects that. Hence I am testing out lots of different approaches in terms of dosing, timing and combinations.
In the mean time I have to get on with life as well. I am a tech entrpreneur and investor as well as a musician and I have five children - only one now under the age of 18. Hence I am quite busy.
And by “better” we mean larger effects on lifespan and healthspan – because that’s what we care about. How can we be so certain? Because just from a small pilot screen of a few mTOR inhibitors, Ora has already identified one that works better than rapamycin.
Longevity is a perfect match for this strategy. We know that the basic pathways are conserved across evolution all the way back to really simple organisms. And it’s pretty easy to tell whether a worm is living or dead. So you have an automate-able endpoint and a simple model organism with a short natural lifespan and you can just go to town. Really genius stuff.
I did. I paid $200 to do the combination of the two chemicals.
Frankly, I also want to know the answer personally as I am taking both compounds daily. It’s about as expensive as a blood test, and in some ways more informative. Rapamycin and Taurine are the two supplements I take the most of. I want to know if they work well together.
I recommend others do the same if you are taking a few supplements together.
One question I had: what happens when multiple people choose the same protocol? For instance, I can’t believe that the rapa/taurine combo hasn’t been submitted multiple times already??? What then? How/where can one find out what protocols have been selected to be tested?
