Who are the biggest critics of Rapamycin?

I think it would be beneficial to look at some of the critics and arguments against Rapamycin therapy for life extension. This way we can conclusively evaluate whether these skeptic raise valuable concerns that could inform future research.

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Hi, and welcome to the forum.

There are a couple different types of critics of rapamycin use for longevity. There are the people who come from the organ transplant world and have experience with the issues these patients on constant daily dosing of rapamycin have (but of course this is a very different dosing schedule than what longevity use is (i.e. we are weekly, transplant patients have daily dosing and have the explicit goal of immune system supression). So - this group is mostly comprised of the organ transplant doctors who are the ones who have prescribed rapamycin for most of the past 20 years.

The other group of “critics” are the rapamycin researchers who are not so much critics as more cautionary, and mostly conflicted (because they are all participating in new longevity biotech startup companies that are developing competitive mTOR inhibitors, have lots of stock in these companies, so have a vested interest in highlighting and emphasizing any possible risk to rapamycin (and thus hindering its adoption), while downplaying their own drug candidates’ risks and unknowns.
In this second group you might include people like:

Dudley Lamming (head of the Lamming lab) - and advisor to Aeovian Pharmaceuticals: https://www.aeovian.com/
https://twitter.com/LammingLab

Joan Mannick
Founder of Tornado Therapeutics Cambrian Biopharma Announces Plan to Develop New mTOR Inhibitors, Tornado Therapeutics led by Joan Mannick
You can listen to Joan Mannick’s thoughts on rapamycin in this podcast: #123 - Joan Mannick, M.D. & Nir Barzilai, M.D.: Rapamycin and metformin—longevity, immune enhancement, and COVID-19 - Peter Attia

We have more details on health and longevity leaders who are pro-rapamycin, and those who are cautious on rapamycin, here: Who in the Health and Longevity Field are Taking Rapamycin (part 2)

Dudley Lamming did a presentation a few days ago that is available online where he covers his criticisms of rapamycin (at high doses, not the lower, pulsed longevity doses):

Issues related to “pseudo-diabetes” is discussed here: Fasting and rapamycin: diabetes versus benevolent glucose intolerance | Cell Death & Disease

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Thanks for the welcome! I’ve been a long time reader of the forum but just decided to make an account today.

Yeah I’ve read most of Lamming’s Twitter threads related to rapalogues and I’ve heard every Attia podcast.

I’m more asking for researchers familiar with the evirolimus trials, familiar with the ITP and related basic science of mTOR, and who raise concerns about employing Rapamycin with the current landscape of literature. Thanks for the reply!

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Thats a very small group of people. I’ve not heard any significant concerns from people that might fall into that definition, other than “there isn’t enough human data in healthy populations”, which is of course a chicken/egg type of issue. Perhaps someone else here has some suggestions…

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