Who wants to participate in guiding life extension through mouse survival follow up?

You may remember the Major Mouse Testing Program slides that we translated in 10 languages, that were supposed to test a zillion things to show the path. This is the thing to do but… it didn’t quite happened. Though, a bit:

  • The NIA Intervention Testing Program (ITP) tests each year a few other compounds in a very robust manner (the link shows a page with all results at a glance on the right hand side, very impressive)
  • The LEV Foundation currently combines up to four treatments that were showed to extend mouse lifespan (Robust Mouse Rejuvenation, very interesting)

These are the things to do – it does drive longevity science, in a practical way! Think of rapamycin notably, being tested in dogs, and in people.

Like many I try to remember some key results in my head, but the number of interventions becomes too big. As I wanted to test things on myself or animals I decided to go through mouse lifespan databases. I knew about drug age and geroprotectors.org (done by friends of mine – hello), and … great but insufficient – one needs a bit too fast to go to every article. If I have to make this effort, how do others ? Do they just rely on the latest news of the few things in their head? Could it be that science errs due to a lack of basic data gathering?

If you are already convinced that current databases are very insufficient (it wasn’t my case), skip this:

  1. As Leon Peshin notices, current databases don’t report control lifespans. This is how you end up with “great lifespan increases” with.. a short lived control group and a normal-live treated group. Leon found this for berberin. I tested 5 things and found the same for fisetin. And on the ITP link above, fisetin showed no life extension! (neither continuously nor cycling, unpublished yet but on their web page). I remember that Michael Rae was always very skeptic about life extensions with ill controls. Is it a frequent issue? I don’t know, until we collect control lifespan as well, not just % increase! Later, I observed that male lifespans have much variability – this type of thing should be very clear and known and analyze to judge results better.
  2. Actually… the mouse fisetin and berberin experiments were not in these databases.. And I was interested in centrophenoxin and canagliflozin and.. neither. Later, I discover that most of the ITP results was not there. Ok, the databases still have plenty of things, but to guide research through lifespan test results we need more.
  3. Deciding to focus on something simple, I went to rapamycin. Oh, not practical: the databases don’t report age at start. Of course one can go through the article, but unless you have decided to spend a lot of time you then don’t get a grasp on the “light” for lifespan.

So, the good thing is that we have these incredible databases to start with – and thanks to the courtesy of the ITP we could cross these databases with their data. But we need to improve the data quality and to guide research with this. In order to avoid continuously considering upgrades of the database, perhaps we can also collect the whole survival data – or guess it from the graphs, including right censorship (when animals are removed while alive) – and gradually suggest researchers to put their whole data in the database.

The task is not small, but it is the right alley for longevity. Who wants to participate? I know that volunteers tend to spend only 10 minutes here and there; or just want to use already curated data; but we don’t need these.

So we need to make a special pool of people:

  • I am happy to include Longévité & Santé, / the ones who contributed significantly to the Major Mouse Testing Program slides (an intense effort during 6 months, contacting researchers for details, followed daily and weekly)
  • Once we are a small but good solid group, we can for example decide to make a database that is accessed only to those who contributed (like this or by making mouse lifespan tests) and the other ones would see the data with a 3 years decay. This, in order to give recognition to the special group and drive the construction of this better data.
  • Once we are a few to better know than other these things, we can discuss with the researchers to suggest next steps, and start orienting research to an optimal.
  • In an ILA board meeting on January 7, 2023, the ILA board officially decided to support the project, so this page will be shared to all groups in 36 countries, in the name of the ILA.
  • As more people later come in, we can release the access, and if we gather many people all over the world, not only do we have better data, we reach a worldwide net of people who are aware of concrete advances in longevity and what should be done next. Certainly an immense accelerator for our cause. – But let’s not dream, finding a small core group is what we need first.

To join, write to collida at longevite dash sante dot org (or PM me in case of doubt, Edouard Debonneuil). Cheers!