Director of the Longevity Genes Project at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Dr. Nir Barzilai has discovered several longevity genes in humans that appear to protect centenarians against major age-related diseases. Barzilai is also co-founder of CohBar, a biotech company developing mitochondria-based therapeutics to treat diseases associated with aging. In an interview with the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, Barzilai explains why some people have longevity genes and the challenges in drug design for age-related diseases:
What are some recent findings of the Longevity Genes Project?
We discovered that longevity genes affect the growth hormone axis. So, in nature, smaller animals live longer — small dogs live longer than the big dogs, ponies live longer than thoroughbreds. If you conduct an experiment in a lab, and you have dwarf versions of animals by accident or by design, they all live longer and live healthier.
We found that over 50 percent of centenarians have some gene in the growth hormone pathways that are affected. This might be the strongest link to longevity we’ve seen.
We’ve had a paper recently accepted to be published in Nature Communication that illustrates how we could block the growth hormone with antibodies in mice so that they live 15 percent longer.