Anti-ageing breakthrough with miracle drug that could 'extend life'

Scientists could be one step closer to discovering the Fountain of Youth after a drug extended the healthy lifespan of mice by a quarter.

Ageing rodents were injected with a drug that blocked the effects of a protein called interleukin 11 (IL-11) in the body.

The treatment reduced deaths from cancer and diseases caused by fibrosis, chronic inflammation and poor metabolism - all hallmarks of ageing.

Mice that received a dose lived for an average of 155 weeks, compared with 120 weeks in untreated animals.

Study author Professor Stuart Cook, from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Medical Science at Imperial College London, said: “These findings are very exciting.

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“The treated mice had fewer cancers, and were free from the usual signs of ageing and frailty, but we also saw reduced muscle wasting and improvement in muscle strength. In other words, the old mice receiving anti-IL11 were healthier.

“While these findings are only in mice, it raises the tantalising possibility that the drugs could have a similar effect in elderly humans.”

Mice in the study were aged 75 weeks - equivalent to around 55 years in humans.

The human body begins to produce more IL-11 from the age of around 55 and it has been linked to chronic inflammation, metabolism disorders, frailty and other signs of ageing.

Prof Cook said many previously developed life-extending drugs either caused too many side effects, did not work in both sexes, or extended survival but not healthy lifespan. He added: “However this does not appear to be the case for IL-11.

“Anti-IL-11 treatments are currently in human clinical trials for other conditions, potentially providing exciting opportunities to study its effects in ageing humans in the future.”

Assistant professor Anissa Widjaja, study co-author from Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, said the research was “an important step toward better understanding ageing”.

She said: “This project started back in 2017 when a collaborator of ours sent us some tissue samples for another project.

“Out of curiosity, I ran some experiments to check for IL-11 levels. From the readings, we could clearly see that the levels of IL-11 increased with age and that’s when we got really excited!

“We found these rising levels contribute to negative effects in the body, such as inflammation and preventing organs from healing and regenerating after injury.

“Although our work was done in mice, we hope that these findings will be highly relevant to human health, given that we have seen similar effects in studies of human cells and tissues.”

The findings were published in the journal Nature. Prof Ilaria Bellantuono, an expert in musculoskeletal ageing at the University of Sheffield, who was not involved with the research, said the data was “solid”.

But she warned there were “scientific hurdles to overcome to use these interventions in patients”.

She said: “It is unthinkable to treat every 50 years old for the rest of their life. Every drug has side effects and there is a cost associated with it.

“We also need to develop knowledge on how to test medicinal drugs in patients at risk of frailty, who are often excluded from clinical trials due to their age.

“Finally, the regulatory system, which approves the use of medicinal drugs, does not recognise frailty as a condition, which means the costs of drugs cannot be reimbursed. This stops investments from the pharmaceutical industry.”