Today is a doubly important day: it marks the final day of the PEARL campaign and it is a celebration of another victory for the life extension commun

PEARL Is Funded, Rapamycin Longevity Clinical Trials Begin

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2021-06-19 00:30:03

Today is a doubly important day: it marks the final day of the PEARL campaign and it is a celebration of another victory for the life extension community.

PEARL smashed its initial fundraising goal and sailed through its two stretch goals, raising just under $183k thanks to the generous support of the community.

The Participatory Evaluation (of) Aging (with) Rapamycin (for) Longevity Study, or PEARL, will launch the first large-scale placebo-controlled clinical trial to determine the effects of rapamycin on human aging. The principal investigator is Dr. James P. Watson based at UCLA.

Rapamycin is a naturally occurring antifungal antibiotic produced by soil bacteria originally discovered on Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui.

While most people know it as a drug used in high doses for organ rejection during transplants, it has potential as a drug to slow down aging in far lower doses. It was the first drug proven to extend the lifespan of mice, even when given late in life, and has been shown to reliably increase the lifespan of yeast, worms, and rats.

Rapamycin works through the mTOR signaling pathway, a master regulator of cellular and energy metabolism, and a potent trigger of autophagy, the ultimate cellular recycling mechanism.

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