Jackson aging research on Nature, Science "top 10" lists of 2009 scientific news
| Date: December 23, 2009 |
Bar Harbor, Maine--Two of the world's most influential science journals have cited a Jackson Laboratory research report in their year-end "top 10" lists of the most significant scientific breakthroughs for 2009, across all sciences.
In July, Jackson Laboratory Professor David Harrison and collaborators reported in the journal Nature that rapamycin, a drug used to prevent organ rejection in human transplant recipients, can significantly extend the lifespan of mice, in replicated experiments and on heterogeneous populations. Harrison's team fed rapamycin to mice late in their life--600 days of age, corresponding to about age 60 in humans--and extended their maximal lifespan by 9 to 14 percent, making rapamycin the first pharmacological intervention proven to lengthen mammalian lifespan.
This research was included in Nature's year-end tally of the top 10 science stories most accessed by their readers. The editors of Science also selected the Jackson Laboratory report among the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year.
The Science editors comment, "It's not Ponce de León's vision of the fountain of youth: the secretion of a dirt-dwelling bacterium from Easter Island. But this year researchers showed that the compound, called rapamycin, boosts longevity in mice, the first time any drug has stretched a mammal's lifespan." Together with advances in understanding how calorie restriction increases lifespan, they note that the Jackson Laboratory findings "might lead researchers to more palatable alternatives for slowing aging or at least increasing how long we remain healthy."
Nature, a U.K. publication, and Science, published in the United States, along with another U.S. journal, PNAS, are widely regarded as the world's most influential peer-reviewed scientific journals.
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif. Its mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human diseases, and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community.
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