Anti-aging breakthrough could mean new drugs within five years

Drugs that combat aging may be available within five years, following landmark work led by an Australian researcher. The work, published in the March 8 issue of Science, finally proves that a single anti-aging enzyme in the body can be targeted, with the potential to prevent age-related diseases and extend lifespans.

The paper, reported by EurekAlert, shows all of the 117 drugs tested work on the single enzyme through a common mechanism. This means that a whole new class of anti-ageing drugs is now viable, which could ultimately prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and type 2 diabetes.

“Ultimately, these drugs would treat one disease, but unlike drugs of today, they would prevent 20 others,” says the lead author of the paper, David Sinclair, from Australia’s UNSW Medicine, who is based at Harvard University, noting: “In effect, they would slow aging. In the history of pharmaceuticals, there has never been a drug that tweaks an enzyme to make it run faster.”