Rapamycin Clinical Trial Update

We continue to see a ramping up the clinical validation testing of rapamycin in humans for anti-aging applications. (slide source above from Matt Kaeberlein).

The PEARL clinical study on rapamycin is ongoing with a few hundred participants.

This week Adam announced a new study he is PI on, to test whether a rapamycin analog (rapalog) can improve physiological and molecular hallmarks of aging in humans.

This adds to 3 other recently-funded human clinical trials for rapamycin in different applications:

Jonathan An at the University of Washington got funding for his study on rapamycin for prevention of periodontal disease.

A clinical trial is underway at Columbia University to determine whether rapamycin can reverse premature ovarian failure (improve fertility) in women - as early research has suggested.

Dr. Brad Stanfield (in New Zealand) is working on funding for a study focused on testing rapamycin to delay muscle aging in the elderly.


Dudley Lamming tweeted:

It’s beyond time to rigorously test the hypothesis that#mTOR inhibition can safely promote healthy aging in humans. With@maml_UWMadison and many other clinical & translational researchers@uw_medicine, over the next three years we will find out!

Matt Kaeberlein commented on twitter:

Congratulations to@lamminglab@maml_UWMadison and colleagues. Agree - beyond time. Exciting to see multiple clinical trials starting this year to assess the impact of rapamycin on different age-related endpoints. Guess I need to update my slide before tomorrow…

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I actually emailed Brad Stanfield with some methodology suggestions for his study but didn’t hear back.

For example I pointed out that rapamycin causes significant weight loss in many people. The sit to stand test is weight bearing so subjects taking Rapamycin may actually be doing less ‘work’ per repetition. This has implications for both the test outcome AND the training. I therefore suggested that, in order to tease out genuine strength increases, an exercise like the leg press may be preferable. Hopefully Dr Stanfield will at least track subjects’ body weight throughout the intervention as a secondary outcome.

I have mentioned this in other threads but my press ups have improved dramatically whilst taking Rapamycin. The strength gains aren’t as dramatic as the load/repetitions suggest however as I’ve also lost over 5kg. I recently started doing pull ups and am now up to 11 (from 5). Will be interesting to see if I can approach my best ever of 18 reps.

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This video is outside the scope of this forum, but a nice review of rapamycin and a possible new applications for Reproduction Span. The presenter does an excellent job tying in longevity and Rapamycin.

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