Rapamycin and Anti-Aging: What Do We Know?
The compound rapamycin is proposed as a major life extension approach, but what do we really know?
mTOR
Aging, a process none of us can escape, is characterized by the ‘gradual deterioration of functional characteristics’. Aging affects all parts of our bodies, including our microbiome. It is, on other words, very complicated.
In fact, in a previous post, we looked at how this leads some researchers towards implementing machine learning in aging research. A later study indeed used machine learning to develop lifespan ‘clocks’.
All this apparently implies that there are simply too much molecules involved to tackle the detrimental effects of aging, but there are some substances that appear to have a large effect. While many pathways are involved in aging, a lot of anti-aging research focuses on so-called ‘downstream targets’. These targets are molecules that influence many pathways. So, manipulating them could have an effect on several molecular pathways simultaneously.
