Sirtris Tests Fountain Of Youth Pill

Image: Leif Parsons

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When Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon heard rumors of a fountain of youth from native Floridians in 1513, he was desperate enough to find it that he was willing to march in chain mail through fetid swamps infested with mosquitoes, alligators, and hostile locals. He never found it.

Nearly five centuries later, the fabled longevity imbued by Florida's mythic fountains may be here for real. Not spewing from a magical spring with sweet-tasting waters, but in a pill designated SRT501.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is testing such a pill in humans in a Food and Drug Administration-approved clinical trial. The tests began last spring with 85 volunteers; in August, the company announced that this medication designed to slow aging and bump up lifespan is working.

A caveat: It will take years of tests and trials to know if the drug will ultimately permit people to routinely live to over 100 years old, while fending off diseases of aging ranging from diabetes to cancer.

You may remember hearing about the seemingly miraculous chemical that SRT501 is based on, called resveratrol. Sirtris co-founder and Harvard professor David Sinclair created a sensation when he announced in 2003 that this naturally occurring compound extends the lifespan of yeast.

This might not have attracted much notice except that resveratrol is found in one of the most popular beverages in the world—red wine—a drink associated with rejuvenation even in the days of Ponce de Leon. According to Sinclair, the grape skins contain the substance, which is passed on during the winemaking process to vins rouges ranging from the humblest Gallo jug wine to the finest St. Emilion.

SRT501 impacts a family of genes in humans and other organisms called "sirtuins," which seem to control a cornucopia of desirable functions in cells that lead to improvements in diseases ranging from obesity and diabetes to Alzheimer's and cancer.

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