This is a bit of a tangent, but is there a biological meaning to the term “longevity drug”? For a layman like me, my first guess is that it’d mean something like “A drug that mitigates the effects of aging and makes you live longer even if you don’t actively have a disease to treat.” But then I’d imagine that e.g. statins would be a “longevity drug” for middle-aged men with a strong family history of heart disease, in that it makes the relevant population less susceptible to an aging-related disease and thereby increases longevity, yet the posts talk about the prospect of creating the “first longevity drug” so clearly it’s being used in a way that doesn’t include statins. Is there a specific definition I’m ignorant of, or is it more of a loose marketing term for a particular subculture of researchers and funders, or what?
Good questions. “Senolytics” (which lyze senescent cells) come to mind as another class of such drugs. Perhaps the idea is that LOY-001 would be the first drug that is officially and explicitly identified as a longevity drug. Statins and senolytics have such a status only unofficially.
This is a bit of a tangent, but is there a biological meaning to the term “longevity drug”? For a layman like me, my first guess is that it’d mean something like “A drug that mitigates the effects of aging and makes you live longer even if you don’t actively have a disease to treat.” But then I’d imagine that e.g. statins would be a “longevity drug” for middle-aged men with a strong family history of heart disease, in that it makes the relevant population less susceptible to an aging-related disease and thereby increases longevity, yet the posts talk about the prospect of creating the “first longevity drug” so clearly it’s being used in a way that doesn’t include statins. Is there a specific definition I’m ignorant of, or is it more of a loose marketing term for a particular subculture of researchers and funders, or what?
Good questions. “Senolytics” (which lyze senescent cells) come to mind as another class of such drugs. Perhaps the idea is that LOY-001 would be the first drug that is officially and explicitly identified as a longevity drug. Statins and senolytics have such a status only unofficially.