The search for youthfulness typically turns to lotions, supplements, serums and diets, but there may soon be a new option joining the fray. Rapamycin, a FDA-approved drug normally used to prevent organ rejection after transplant surgery, may also slow aging in human skin, according to a study from Drexel University College of Medicine researchers published in Geroscience.

Basic science studies have previously used the drug to slow aging in mice, flies, and worms, but the current study is the first to show an effect on aging in human tissue, specifically skin – in which signs of aging were reduced. Changes include decreases in wrinkles, reduced sagging and more even skin tone — when delivered topically to humans.

“As researchers continue to seek out the elusive ‘fountain of youth’ and ways to live longer, we’re seeing growing potential for use of this drug,” said senior author Christian Sell, PhD, an associate professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the College of Medicine. “So, we said, let’s try skin. It’s a complex organism with immune, nerve cells, stem cells – you can learn a lot about the biology of a drug and the aging process by looking at skin.”

The University of Cambridge’s Dr. William Bains provides a thorough overview of extracellular cross-links in this lecture. He explains that advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) can irreversibly link proteins together, and cross-linking AGEs appear to play an important role in aging. They are particularly problematic in the cardiovascular system, where cross-links cause our arteries to stiffen with age, raising blood pressure and making a patient more likely to suffer from a heart attack or stroke. Cross-links are also implicated in complications from diabetes. Dr. Bains explains the structure and nature of cross-links, where they accumulate in the body, and even what their surprising role is in cooking. He ends by discussing a major AGE-breaking drug that has been tested on humans and touches on potential future therapies.

Visit www.sens.org/videos to view the rest of our course lecture videos.

This episode will take you through Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s Seven Pillars of aging, the research that he’s currently doing, his opinion on biological age, AGEs and the different sources, and the impact of growth hormone on biological age.

Who is Dr. Aubrey de Grey?

Aubrey de Grey is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. He is the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging and co-author of Ending Aging. He is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today not to die from age-related causes.

He is also an amateur mathematician who has contributed to the study of the Hadwiger–Nelson problem. His research focuses on whether regenerative medicine can prevent the aging process. He works on the development of what he calls “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence” (SENS), a collection of proposed techniques to rejuvenate the human body and stop aging.

To this end, he has identified seven types of molecular and cellular damage caused by essential metabolic processes. SENS is a proposed panel of therapies designed to repair this damage. De Grey is an international adjunct professor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, the American Aging Association, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

He has been interviewed in recent years in a number of news sources, including CBS 60 Minutes, the BBC, The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, The Washington Post, TED, Popular Science, The Colbert Report, Time, the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, and The Joe Rogan Experience. He is also a member of Flooved advisory board.