The closest thing to actually improving the health and lifespan of a human is to improve the same things in a mammal.
Mammalian life span studies are rare because they take so long to complete. But we think they’re worth it.
Before we can find effective treatments for humans, we’ll have to test interventions on mammals to see if they directly extend lifespan or improve symptoms of aging (like frailty, cognitive decline, or the incidence of diseases like cancer).
Skeptical Optimism
Our philosophy is to be suspicious of results that depend on too many uncertain assumptions, like particular mechanisms of aging, or analogies between invertebrate and human biology. That’s why we’re not doing fly or worm studies, or searching for “aging genes.” We’re focusing on later-stage research that can bear fruit faster.
Verifying Promising Results
Most studies that show a lifespan-extending effect have never been independently replicated. We’d like to change that.
We’re writing grants to aging biologists to run lifespan studies on rodents, investigating treatments that have already shown preliminary evidence of effectiveness. In some cases we’ll commission our own studies from contract research organizations.
Some interventions we're considering testing:
- Carboxyfullerenes
- Epithalamin
- L-deprenyl
- Nicotinamide Ribososide
We’re also interested in researching combinations of drugs and optimizing treatment protocols.
Trustworthy Experiments
Designing experiments rigorously is a top priority, and we’ll hold ourselves to a higher standard than the typical preclinical study.
For instance:
- Using genetically diverse animals from multi-way crosses
- Blinding and randomization of treatment and control groups
- Sample sizes large enough to power studies
- Animals kept in high-quality, humane conditions
We’re collaborating with researchers from METRICS and the Interventions Testing Program to design experimental protocols according to principles of reproducible research.
We believe in open science
- All experimental data will be made freely available to the public
- We’ll pre-register experimental designs
- We’ll create immutable public records of what we do