Elysium Health is selling an anti-aging pill for roughly $60/month:
Basis and the other pills that will likely follow it in the next five to ten years are the fruits of a scientific backwater that has been working toward this moment for a quarter-century. These drugs and supplements are aimed to be a hack of the heretofore most intractable condition of human existence, the invisible countdown clock with which evolution has equipped our bodies. They just might postpone the onset of the most common afflictions of our dotage, from cancer to heart disease to diabetes to Alzheimer's. We won't necessarily enjoy longer maximum life spans (though that's a possibility), but we very well might enjoy longer health spans, meaning the vital, productive chunk of our lives before degeneration kicks in.
[...] [Any] qualms I might have had about whether this was simply next-generation snake oil faded in the halo of the six Nobel Prize winners who sit on Elysium's scientific advisory board. Most impressively, the company's co-founder is Leonard Guarente, who heads MIT's aging center and is one of the pioneers of aging science, a contender for the Nobel Prize should geroscience ever get a nod from the Swedish academy.
[...] The theory behind Basis is in part an evolution of the theory behind drinking red wine: One of its main ingredients, pterostilbene, is considered a more powerful version of resveratrol, with a more convincing track record in the lab. As for NR [nicotinamide riboside], by increasing NAD [nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide] levels in our cells, it in turn appears to reverse mitochondrial decay. In a 2013 scientific paper, Sinclair announced that a single week of injections of an NAD precursor into elderly mice had made their muscles look young again, though without restoring their strength. Both compounds aim to activate sirtuins, and the hope is that together they might amplify what each does individually.
Here's an older article about the NAD booster approach, as well as the 2013 study (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.11.037) (DX) by David Sinclair and colleagues published in Cell. Pterostilbene at Wikipedia.
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Scientists have found evidence of a broad range of "anti-aging" effects caused by giving older mice (but not younger mice) nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), a compound found in various vegetables and other foods. High-grade NMN for human consumption is not yet commercially available:
Scientists in the US claim to have discovered a natural compound found in avocado, broccoli and cucumber that has "remarkable anti-ageing effects in mice" – and could also work on humans. The researchers, who have started clinical trials involving a small group of people, said older mice given the compound, called NMN, in their water saw an array of beneficial effects. Their level of physical activity increased, bone density and muscles improved, the immune system and liver performed better, their eyesight improved and they even lost weight.
[...] As animals get older, they produce less NAD [nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide] and it is thought this is a part of the ageing process. Attempts to add extra NAD failed, so the researchers looked for a way to boost its production in the body. They gave mice NMN, also found in cabbage and edamame, in their drinking water to see if this would boost levels of NAD and have a rejuvenating effect. Asked if this worked, lead researcher Professor Shin-ichiro Imai, of Washington University in St Louis, said: "The answer is basically yes. As a matter of fact, NMN has remarkable anti-ageing effects in mice. "Those NMN [fed] mice definitely have longer health-span – entire lifespan, we're not sure, but if this keeps working in this way they could have a longer lifespan as well."
[...] However, while there was no sign of it in the study, there could be a significant catch – NAD might also give an energy boost to cancer cells. "Some tumour cells are known to have a higher capability to synthesise NAD, so we were concerned that giving NMN might increase cancer incidence," Professor Imai said. "But we have not seen any differences in cancer rates between the groups [of mice]."
Long-Term Administration of Nicotinamide Mononucleotide Mitigates Age-Associated Physiological Decline in Mice (DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2016.09.013) (DX)
Previously: Elysium Health Pitches an Anti-Aging Pill (that pill used nicotinamide riboside (NR) as a precursor to NAD).
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @01:55AM
Is that a lot? This pill needs to be sold at a price point out of reach of undesirables, you see, but I don't know personally where that price point is, because I'm a millenial hipster unicorn startup billionaire, and money is for the poor.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday August 26 2016, @02:19AM
Once the demand kicks in, they'll raise the price faster than you can say "EpiPen". Then the gutter trash will deteriorate and the new Nephilim will be born.
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(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @02:26AM
Q: What did the Linux user's girlfriend say in the middle of sex?
A:
--------------------\
| Don't be so ruff!! --- 🐩
--------------------/
(Score: 2, Informative) by hendrikboom on Friday August 26 2016, @02:35AM
For those with limited character sets, U+1F429 is a poodle.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @02:38AM
Welcome to 6 years old Unicode. What OS are you running that doesn't support Unicode 6.0. Sounds like it's a 💩
(Score: 2) by ticho on Friday August 26 2016, @05:52AM
My OS is just fine, thankyouverymuch. I merely prefer to use a font which doesn't waste memory on useless crap.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 26 2016, @06:09AM
Given the last Emoji character the AC used, that sentence can be taken literally.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Friday August 26 2016, @01:30PM
Maybe I don't see emoticons because I usually browse without images or javascript, for a list of reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @06:04PM
Emojis have nothing to do with Javascript. Moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @06:10PM
Aint nuthin wrong with impregnatin' no poodle.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @02:31AM
Linux user gangbang:
🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶
🚶🐩🚶🚶🐩🚶🚶🐩🚶
🚶🐩🚶🚶🐩🚶🚶🐩🚶
🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶
(Score: 5, Informative) by stormwyrm on Friday August 26 2016, @02:40AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday August 26 2016, @04:46AM
Kinda like Rossi's e-cat?
I have seen no data yet that tells me he is actually onto something.
Everything I have seen to date tells me this whole thing is a pipe dream. ( pun intended ).
Yet scores of big-names and universities and PhD and claimed industry leaders seem to be falling for this?
Seems getting big and well known is the worst thing that can happen to a company. They come down with a disease that wipes out common sense.
Call it "Executitus"? When the laws of physics are subordinate to the executive directive. Never has actually happened, but a lot of people think it does for a little while.
That is until the chickens come home to roost.
Then they all take their management bonuses and go buy out another company.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @05:04AM
Couldn't it be possible that even with winning a Nobel, you could be mistaken in other areas?
My father is fairly distinguished, but is often mistaken (as my mother keeps reminding him).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @02:47AM
What the fuck is NR? NAD? How do you hold down a job when you don't even know how to write?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @03:02AM
Seems obvious to me. They are using Dolby(tm) Noise Reduction techniques to pulverize your gonads so they can be injected into your cells. :D
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday August 26 2016, @03:13AM
Sorry, NAD = Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide [wikipedia.org].
NR appears to be nicotinamide riboside [wikipedia.org]. Oddly enough, they don't expand on the term anywhere in that article, it just says "NR, one of the two compounds in Basis, is a precursor that converts to NAD in the body".
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @12:38PM
OP AC here. Thanks for the elaboration - my bad for going off too harsh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @02:59AM
Doesn't Elysium have to do with dying? As in going to the Elysian fields after dying?
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Friday August 26 2016, @03:09AM
Shh, don't tell them about the film [wikipedia.org]!
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @03:08AM
let's hope that taking these pills will make the unhealthy environment move away from you.
i can see some real benefits in areas like, for example fukushima: taking these pills will make the
radioactive particles move away from you, just like water perls condensing on a cold can of (who doesn't like) beer!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @04:22AM
You should move to Detroit or Chicago, where you will lose the will to live, and the best these anti-aging pills will do for you is make you age at a normal rate.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Friday August 26 2016, @04:28AM
Life extension, IT'S A COOKBOOK!
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday August 26 2016, @07:29AM
Yes, Cassandra got the gift of prophecy by giving in to the demands of Apollo, but he later made sure that no one would ever believe her. Perfect foreknowledge, zero credibility, better off just not knowing.
Any Sybil! Yes, I will submit to you, if you give me immortality (and the foreknowledge thing). But she forgot to also ask for eternal youth. She got older, and older, and even more older, till finally the Romans could just stick her in a jar, and only take her out when they needed some prophecy. I mean, no need to feed her, she can't die, after all.
So all these life-prolonger charlatans, you may be able to make someone live longer, but you have no way to filter the fact that anyone who would pay for such measures probably does not really need to live any longer, since they are jerks. I say, sell them the cryogenics thing, and then don't pay the power bill! Ha!~ (Real life, or death, story, honest).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Friday August 26 2016, @08:44AM
So you rely on so-called "natural" death to get rid of people you disagree with or people that have power over you. That shows you for what you are: a coward who is powerless in both words and actions. You could change the world without killing anybody, even with mere words, but no, you're counting on "the way things are" to do your work for you. You'll disparage anti-aging up until the point that it works, and then you'll bemoan the "consequences". Turns out you are a philosopher charlatan.
I hope you live forever. They say life is suffering.
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(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 26 2016, @06:15PM
to get rid of people you disagree with or people that have power over you.
Not quite what I was going for! Just an observation that those most interested in life-extension, or immortality, are often not the best candidates, just as anyone who wants to be president of the United States should by that very fact be disqualified from running for the office. And even if they got what they wanted, it would not be what they thought. Law of unintended consequences, and all that.
Fear of death is one of those things I have never understood. You might be saying too yourself, "Yea, Aristarchus, but that is because you have lived for almost two and a half millennium!" Point taken, but I must say that I never put that much extra effort in trying not to die. It is almost as if those who live long do it by accident, because they are concerned with more important things than just not dying.
It is something like Douglas Adams description of how to fly in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: you throw yourself at the ground, and miss.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 26 2016, @06:36PM
I'll tell you what. We'll make a compromise and give every life extension customer a little baggy of suicide pills. We'll even print a little smiley face emoji on the bag.
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(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday August 26 2016, @08:35PM
Techno techno handbag disco...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @09:05AM
but you have no way to filter the fact that anyone who would pay for such measures probably does not really need to live any longer, since they are jerks
I currently take a prescription that costs a lot more than $2 a pill and it keeps me alive, not just young. So spending $2 per pill to stay young(er) would make people "jerks"? Here's a career tip for you: never get a job in the pharmaceutical industry because you won't like their customers ... they're all "jerks".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bobs on Friday August 26 2016, @11:49AM
If it works, and is so great, where is the double-blind study showing positive, reproducible results?
If it ain't reproducible it ain't "science".
On the one hand, you can say they are making it affordable and working to get it out there for everybody, not just charging a fortune and reserving it for the hyper-rich elite.
On the other hand, snake oil benefits from a mass-market. There is a larger pool of marks who can and will afford to pay $60/month vs $600. It all depends upon the elasticity of demand. If they can pull off 100k or 1,000,000 subscribers at $60/month? $720 is noticible expense for many people, almost $1,500 for a couple.
He is making the right noises - says they are running a human trial:
From the article:
"...conducting a human trial (currently 120 people between the ages of 60 and 80 are participating).
But the primary way in which Elysium distinguishes itself from the retail supplements business is Guarente himself, who is in a very real sense monetizing his reputation. “I’m there to really keep a lot of pressure on the company to do human trials and testing,” he told me. “Never, ever, make a claim that’s not substantiated by evidence.” "
But committing physically and financially to a daily and never-ending supplement that has not been tested seems like a big deal to me.
My conclusions:
(Score: 1) by godshatter on Friday August 26 2016, @08:42PM
Prepare to be patient. Experiments designed to determine what affect a pill has on aging will likely have to run a long time before we can expect to see results.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03 2016, @11:17AM
I'm quite happy to wait 5 years or so. That should be long enough to show that it does what they think it does, and any significant side effects will show up in that time. I wouldn't count on it having the long-term effects they expect it to, but it if slows down one facet of aging without side effects, I think I would pay the price.
However, the solution to living indefinitely really has to come from actually reversing the effects of aging, and not just slowing it down.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 26 2016, @02:03PM
A lot of very very rich people would like to not have to get old and die. I get the impulse, but that doesn't mean that they have something real that works and doesn't have nasty side-effects.
On the other hand, I can definitely afford $60 a month, and if it worked on someone like me I wouldn't mind having the body of a 30-something for a long period of time.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 26 2016, @05:32PM
Even if it did work, it's not going to be the last anti-aging therapy. The question here is whether the effect is significant and positive enough to warrant its use. Are the early adopters getting $720 worth of better health, and are they adding any years to their lifespan, allowing them to live to see more advanced therapies?
Even though anti-aging is a long term thing, studies should be able to notice improvements (repair of damage) quickly. So we should wait to see the results of studies in humans.
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(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @07:46PM
I wouldn't mind having the body of a 30-something for a long period of time.
Say, thirty minutes?