Anti-Aging News: Secret To Long Life May Be Compound Found On An Island

The demand for youthfulness is high and people are willing to try almost anything, stretching, face lotions, puzzles, you name it and it’s probably been linked to staying young, but it turns out the key to “the fountain of youth” may actually be a pill.

A compound called rapamycin may actually be able to postpone aging and death, according to the MIT Technology Review. The compound, discovered in a bacteria on Easter Island, an island in the Pacific Ocean, has been successful in extending the life of lab mice.

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The mice given rapamycin lived 25 percent longer than those that weren’t given the drug. The drug containing rapamycin was created and first tested by Novartis and was recently licensed by Boston-based company PureTech Health after Novartis decided that anti-aging solutions was no longer part of the company’s strategy, a spokesperson told the MIT Tech Review.

PureTech Health plans to continue testing the drug that Novartis had success with and detailed in a 2014 study. The drug Everolimus that was derived from the rapamycin was given to people 65 years and older who were receiving flu vaccines and results showed that those given the drug had a better response to the flu vaccine.

This means that the immune systems of those who received the drug were invigorated, kind of like that of a young person. Studying solely the immune systems of older people was a way to study one property of age, without having to track patients for a lifetime a taxing and expensive task. Increasing the effectiveness of the immune systems in the elderly could lead to better chances fighting cancer and organ failure detailed PureTech.