New Lung Drug May Reverse Aging by Up to Six Years

A new drug meant for lung disease might just delay aging, researchers claim. Patients taking rentosertib developed by Insilico Medicine in Massachusetts showed shifts in blood proteins that made them look biologically younger. Several tests put their age back three or four years on average. In one instance the drop hit six years.

"There is a promising trend in age reversal in addition to treating the disease, and it came as a bonus for disease treatment," said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and co-CEO of Insilico Medicine. He told Fox News Digital that this basically means patients are predicted to be younger using validated aging clocks. The team does not yet know what that means exactly.

These results appeared in Nature Biotechnology and were presented Monday at the Nature conference held at Sorbonne University in Paris. The study also listed Harvard Medical School, Stanford University, the Broad Institute, RWTH Aachen University, Peking University, and Westlake University among its researchers.

The findings come with big caveats. This does not prove the drug can reverse aging or help people live longer yet. "It's early days," Zhavoronkov noted. "The drug is still investigational." Rentosertib is an experimental treatment discovered with artificial intelligence to fight idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a serious condition that scars lungs.

In this unexpected outcome, the drug altered patterns of blood proteins so patients appeared younger on average by three to four years, sometimes as much as six. Six different aging tests showed the same general pattern. Patients taking rentosertib scored biologically lower than those receiving a placebo. The strongest effect came after four weeks when people took 30 mg twice daily.

When researchers compared these results with data from more than 55,000 people in the UK Biobank, they found the drug changed several blood proteins in the opposite direction of normal aging signs. They also saw hints the medicine affects aging at the cellular level by altering how cells function and respond to damage. "Everybody agrees that living longer should be a fundamental human right for everyone," Zhavoronkov said.

The study design relied on AI to find what he calls molecular criminals, biological targets linked to both disease and aging. But Zhavoronkov stressed these findings are preliminary. This is a pilot that is early and exploratory. The sample size was small with just 42 patients analyzed over 12 weeks. All participants had IPF, which can change many proteins used to measure biological aging. That means lung disease improvements might have driven the protein shifts in blood.

The findings do not prove rentosertib slows aging, keeps people healthier longer, or extends lives. Results rest only on changes in blood proteins and do not yet support using this drug as an anti-aging treatment. Risks and side effects were found to be manageable according to Dr.

Carol Ann Satler holds the title of senior vice president of clinical development at Insilico Medicine. She spoke with Fox News Digital about the initial trial results. The most common potential side effects involved mild diarrhea, slightly lower potassium levels in the blood, and temporary increases in liver enzymes. Once you stop the drug, essentially they return to normal, Satler explained. In the next trial, the doctor said we will look to adjust the doses of the drug based on the side effect profile so that people can stay on it longer.

Rentosertib has now moved into a year-long phase 3 study involving more than 300 patients in China, according to Insilico. Larger and longer trials are needed to determine whether the drug truly has anti-aging effects and whether they could lead to better health. These future studies must include healthy older adults and populations without idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. While more research lies ahead, Zhavoronkov said the findings have given him more confidence to continue pursuing drugs that could target both age-related diseases and aging itself. Everybody agrees that living longer should be a fundamental human right for everyone, he stated.