A Solution to Alzheimer's and Aging?
Rapamycin and it's potential.
👋 Hello, and welcome to Curation for Longevity by Laura Minquini. I am a longevity advocate, entrepreneur, and the founder of MYKIGAI.
In this newsletter, we dive into longevity as a field and practice, and look at what can help make it the next consumer health & lifestyle category. 🚀
The following article is the third in our series featuring youth change-makers in longevity! This week, we’re featuring Victoria Dmitruczyk, a 19-year-old currently exploring how we can expand our health-span through emerging tech solutions. She’s invested in women's health and passionate about building and scaling poverty intervention projects. If you have any questions, or want to set up a chat, email victoria.dmitruczyk@gmail.com.
Rapamycin and it's potential
Arguably, one of the most devastating diseases that can ravage someone is Alzheimer’s (and dementia in general). Rather than taking away the body, we take away the mind of an individual.
Unfortunately, the brain is a mystery to us, and while we understand a lot of the biology of our bodies, our brains are much harder to truly grasp. However, just because it’s harder doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
🧬 Introducing: mTOR
mTOR is a tyrosine protein kinase that aids with cell functions like division, survival, nutrition, oxygenation, and energy. It promotes insulin activation and takes in inputs from various growth factors and amino acids. The mTOR pathway is absolutely essential for regulating metabolism and physiology in mammals, and plays an important role in ensuring that organs, such as the brain, are running properly.
However, mTOR is a double-edged sword, and too much or too little is not a good thing. In the case of Alzheimer’s and other brain-degenerating diseases, our bodies are producing too much mTOR. This is because the activation of mTOR induces Aβ production and aggregation by inhibiting both autophagy and lysosome systems directly. So, how do we get over this?
According to a 2019 report, various studies found that mTOR inhibition: “clearly reduced Alzheimer disease neuropathological hallmarks in mouse models.” Now, there is a huge call for introducing mTOR inhibitors like rapamycin in the treatment of AD.
Let’s explore this concept a little bit more.
💊 Meet your new best friend: Rapamycin
Rapamycin is an mTOR-inhibiting drug. This means that if we’re producing too much, rapamycin can help us actually get back down to a healthier level. From a scientific perspective, this is because rapamycin interacts with the intracellular receptor of FKBP12. This combined complex binds directly to the FRB domain of mTOR, allowing inhibition.
Rapamycin is most commonly used as a drug helping prevent organ transplant rejection, amongst a few other small uses. Although it is currently not used for Alzheimer’s disease, various studies have indicated that using rapamycin may be the: “most effective and reproducible pharmacological approach for directly targeting the aging process to increase life span and health span in laboratory animals.”
Currently, no dominating treatments exist for treating Alzheimer’s. Rapamycin-induced mTOR inhibition has been shown to have a variety of benefits towards mouse models with AD, including:
Additionally, rapamycin is not a new drug. It’s approved by the FDA and extensive studies have given us the known dosing numbers and side effects. This means that we know what we’re working with, and we know it’s safe.
It is worth noting that in most mouse models, rapamycin was given in the early stages of AD, indicating that once the disease progresses further, it may be harder to actually stop/reverse. However, this does not mean that we should stop drug trials for late stage AD or ignore funding. There is an insane amount of potential, even if it is just used as a preventative drug.
But rapamycin’s future doesn’t stop there. Several studies have indicated that dosing rapamycin may be able to help extend our health and lifespans!
🧠 Living Longer with Rapamycin
Rapamycin:
In a 3-month treatment regimen, was shown to increase remaining life expectancy of mice by up to 60%.
Rapamycin is basically able to rejuvenate immunity so that we can potentially have longer, more functional lives.
But, it’s not that easy.
There’s a lot of pushback against rapamycin. Individuals are scared of introducing such a compound into their lives, but, this can be changed with education.
In the past, rapamycin was feared as a cancer treatment, with individuals thinking that it would directly give them cancer. However, it was later shown to prevent lymphoma and some types of cancer in transplant patients. Now, certain rapamycin analogs (ex. temsirolimus) are commonly used in cancer therapy! 😍
There are overwhelming amounts of evidence that indicate rapamycin will delay, reverse, and suppress cell senescence and aging-related diseases. Knowing that it has been shown to be especially effective as a preventative approach, the time is now to start learning and investing in it.
So whether or not you yourself directly choose to use rapamycin, the implications are clear. We need to invest more into studying this drug in longer, human-focused trials, and eventually regulate it for more than just organ transplantation. The potential it has for our life and health-spans is almost unmatched when compared to any other drug.
Here’s to living longer with rapamycin! 🎉
Fresh off the Press Rapamycin News
I love serendipity and am glad Victoria’s piece coincides with Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, an important name in the world of longevity, geroscience, and rapamycin, being a guest on the 🎧 Tim Ferris podcast.
I wrote a post in The Who is Who of Longevity on how crucial it would be for Dr. Kaeberlein to be a guest so his research with the Dog Aging Project gets more notoriety and funding.
Tim Ferris is the OG of Los Padrinos of #scicomm (Science communication) and health bros. Next up Huberman? And eventually… Joe Rogan! And, for the record, I don’t mean bros as a pejorative. It’s just a fact of life.
It will be good for Rapamycin to achieve this level of exposure and make the general public aware of its potential.
You can read The Case for Rapamaycin to learn more about the history of this off-patent drug which is like the Viagra of longevity.
If you want to keep informed, the best source is Rapamycin News.
If you want to try Rapamycin, try Healthspan (note using is it would be very much biohacking, and not just the “I am a biohacker because I use infrared red lights”, but the real “I am trying a pharmaceutical that is still be studying for longevity”). Our American subscribers can get Rapamycin prescribed through this telehealth platform. This is by the way, a not-sponsored link, I just love the dedication from the founder and the user experience they have created.