The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub

[Rhyothemis]

Radiolab did an amazing piece on rapamycin:

wnycstudios.org/podcasts/ra...

"This episode, a tale of a wonder drug that will make you wonder about way more than just drugs.

Doctor-reporter Avir Mitra follows the epic and fantastical

journey of a molecule dug out of a distant patch of dirt that would go

on to make billions of dollars, prolong millions of lives, and teach us

something fundamental we didn’t know about ourselves. Along the way, he

meets a geriatric mouse named Ike, an immigrant dad who’s a little bit

cool sometimes, a prophetic dream that prompts a thousand-mile journey,

an ice cream container that may or may not be an accessory to

international drug smuggling, and - most important of all - an obscure

protein that’s calling the shots in every one of your cells RIGHT NOW."

keywords: mTOR , Dr Surendra Sehgal, cancer, Alzheimer's, fungal infections, autophagy, transplant surgery, stents

[Rhyothemis]

Momo takes low dose rapamycin:

cnn.com/videos/health/2016/...

[jimcaster]

This is fantastic! My first thought was to see if rapamycin has been studied as a potential Parkinson’s Disease treatment. It has, although not yet in humans as far as I know. It's soooo frustrating that it takes so long before human trials.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/306...

[Rhyothemis in reply to jimcaster]

There's trial on for rapamycin (aka sirolimus) for MSA; results are supposed to be announced in 2022. It does take a long time. I'm worried that since MSA is diagnosed so late in the disease, the treatment won't show efficacy.

[Rhyothemis in reply to jimcaster]

That Dr Sehgal - what a great scientist. So glad he persevered.

[Rhyothemis]

I came across a possible downside to rapamycin, it can increase a transporter for arginine and may result in an increase in NO generated from inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS).

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

This could cause an increase in peroxynitrite and oxidative stress. The cerebellum is quite vulnerable to excess NO from iNOS, so this makes me worry about the MSA trial. The MSA mouse model studies were favorable, however. A rapamycin study in a mouse model of Fragile X (a form of autism) did not go well, and I think excessive iNOS activity is a problem in Fragile X & other forms of autism.

So I will just have to keep my fingers crossed until 2022 ...

[Rhyothemis]

A partially crowd funded clinical trial of rapamycin for healthy aging:

longevity.technology/ageles...

youtu.be/taVc0PyW6lU(Not working as expected?)

[jimcaster]

An international team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, the CECAD Cluster of Excellence in Ageing research at the University of Cologne, the University College London and the University of Michigan have now been able to show that rapamycin, a well-known anti-ageing candidate, targets gut cells specifically to alter the way of DNA storage inside these cells, and thereby promotes gut health and longevity.

technologynetworks.com/drug...