Rapamycin may mimic calorie restriction’s life-extending effects—offering hope for a longer life without hunger. Metformin, however, fell short.
United States: The quest to find the means of lengthening life has been going on by people throughout the centuries.
The philosopher stone was never discovered by the alchemists, but the scientists have repeated the findings that life can be extended by reducing the amount of food eaten enough- at least among some experimental animals in the labs.
Anti-ageing drug rapamycin may extend life almost as effectively as restricting calories – our new research https://t.co/JIBuLzS3ve via @ConversationUK
— Alexei Maklakov (@AlexeiMaklakov) June 19, 2025
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Can we, however, eat what we want and live long at the same time?
The solution is compounds that have the same effect as that of dieting, and the two most famous compounds are rapamycin and metformin, diet-mimicking drugs.
In a newly published paper, my colleagues and I discovered that rapamycin lives longer just about as reliably as eating less, but that metformin does not, theconversation.com reported.
Since researchers reported that laboratory rats that dieted lived longer than their overfed lab mates (nearly a century ago ), dietary restriction has been the gold standard for attaining a longer lifespan.
However, to a lot of individuals, a permanent diet is difficult and not something to look forward to. Besides, when it is done to the extreme, it even becomes unhealthy.
This is the reason why we needed to know and understand whether there was any chance that drugs that are mimics of dieting could come to our rescue of eating less without the undesired side effects.
The discovery of rapamycin began in the 1970s when bacteria found in Easter Island soil were found and is currently found to be used by medical professionals to prevent rejection of transplanted organs because it has a strong effect as an immunosuppressant.
It functions by inhibiting a molecular switch, which informs the cells when the nutrients are in sufficient supply, theconversation.com reported.
Metformin, on the other hand, is an artificial relative of a compound produced in French lilac (also referred to as goat’s rue) and is commonly used in treating type 2 diabetes by controlling blood sugar.
The two drugs already took part in how the body recognizes food and energy, so as biologists like us, we had hopes that they would replicate the processes used by eating less.