Can a Single Pill Keep You Healthy to 100?

A new drug is being developed and tested that could change the future of aging forever

by Sari Harrar, AARP, July 1, 2019

Here it is, the elixir of life!” Joan Mannick says, jokingly, as she drops a shiny, salmon-pink pill into my palm. It’s RTB101, a drug developed by Mannick’s Boston-based biotech company that could change the future of aging forever.

I feel a crazy urge to pop it into my mouth. Similar drugs have extended the lives of countless worms, fruit flies and mice by slowing down an ancient aging process. But unlike most other promising substances that have come and gone, this one has been shown to work in another notable species: humans.

In studies of more than 900 people by Mannick and her team, RTB101 and drugs like it bolstered aging immune systems, cut risk for respiratory diseases and may have lowered the risk of urinary tract infections. A version of the RTB101 drug could win Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval as early as 2021 for a single, age-related health threat: the winter colds, flu, pneumonia and other respiratory tract infections that send over 1 million older adults to the hospital every year and kill more than 75,000. Studies of the drug as a preventive for Parkinson’s disease are set for later this year, with additional research looking into its effect on reducing heart failure being eyed for some time in the future.

In the suddenly hot world of aging science, RTB101 is an A-list celebrity. It’s the biggest star in the current quest for a drug that extends the healthy lifespan, a quest aided by the National Institutes of Health’s little-known, taxpayer-funded Interventions Testing Program (ITP). The ITP has been quietly experimenting with compounds thought to extend longevity in mice and worms at three major laboratories across the nation. One of the best-kept secrets in aging research, the $4.7 million-a-year ITP has also debunked some big antiaging crazes, including green tea, curcumin, and resveratrol.

But RTB101 has shown real promise, as have other similar drugs. An unprecedented number of age-defying compounds from labs across the U.S. are now heading into human clinical trials for the first time.

“We’ve reached the perfect storm in aging science,” says physician Nir Barzilai, founding director of the Institute for Aging Research at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. “Everything is happening. We have the foundation from decades of animal studies. We’re ready to move on to people.”

The ultimate goal: to put the brakes on aging itself — preventing the pileup of chronic health problems, dementia, and frailty that slam most of us late in life. “I want 85 to be the new 65,” says Mannick, the chief medical officer and co-founder of resTORbio, the company developing RTB101.

Not longer life, but a better life

The need is enormous. In a decade, nearly 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older. Three out of 4 will have two or more serious health conditions. At least 1 in 4 can expect memory lapses and fuzzy thinking, while 1 in 10 will develop dementia.

“Right now doctors play whack-a-mole with chronic diseases in older adults. You treat one, another pops up,” says Felipe Sierra, director of the National Institute on Aging’s Division of Aging Biology. “The goal instead is to tackle aging itself, the major risk factor for almost every major disease.”

While these drugs might also extend longevity, experts say that’s a side effect, not the real goal. “People don’t want to live longer,” notes S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health and a researcher on aging at the University of Chicago. “They want to stay out of the red zone — the years when health and quality of life decline drastically. A drug that slows the biological process of aging will be a medical revolution on par with the discovery of antibiotics. Whoever develops the first one will be very, very famous.”