Rapamycin Can Delay Epigenetic Aging

As we all know, age is clearly an inappropriate measurement because it is based entirely on the passage of time, regardless of the biological changes in our bodiesIn 2013, Steve Horvath of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), described the amazing mathematical precision of chemical modifications in DNA, called methylation, that change with ageUsing these methylation maps, he deduced a highly accurate age prediction algorithm, which is essentially a time-independent measurement that measures age on a biological basisImage source: Horvath and Ken Raj of Public Health England in collaboration with Ken Raj in 2018 have developed an improved algorithm called Skin and Blood Clock, which can be used for both in vitro culture and in vivo cultureUsing this epigenetic clock, Raj and Horvath now demonstrate that rapamycin has a role to delay aging, not only in many animal species but also in human cellsTrue, this is a process that occurs in human cells rather than on the body, but this finding is consistent with an independent observation that the MLST8 gene variant that encodes part of the target of rapamycin is associated with faster epigenetic aging in humansThe consistency of results between observations by cultured cells on the bench and genome-wide association studies with human tissue highlights the fidelity of the system, which has been deduced and validated in humans to test the effects of compounds on human agingEqually important, rapamycin has been well documented to prevent inhibited cell aging -- a process known as gero-conversion, raj and Horvath have previously shown that the process is different from epigenetic agingRaj's team concluded: "The extended life characteristics of rapamycin may be the result of a variety of effects, including, but not necessarily limited to, inhibiting cell aging and epigenetic aging, and potentially enhancing cell proliferation potential."so, rapamycin seems to have an extraordinary ability to suppress two separate ways of agingWhile buy-to-let is common in retail, it is extremely rare in biologyAs in retail, the availability of rapamycin can be problematic, and it is important to note that the effects of rapamycin have not been extensively tested in other cell typesDespite this warning, this exciting discovery, along with the tools and methods described by Raj and Horvath, will undoubtedly encourage the search for better compounds that may help promote healthy human agingreferences: Steve Horvath et al, Rapamycin retards epigenetic ageing of keratinocytes independently of its effects on the sabaths, son and enaz, and olin, Aging (2019)DOI: 10.18632/aging.101976