About This Project

"I am a little mouse. We, mice, typically have short life full of dangers and struggles. But I want to make a difference! I want to live long and healthy. I want to do something big in my life, I want to make YOU live longer and healthier too!"

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Every life is precious. We will test a combination of drugs shown to extend healthy lifespan in animals. The largest life extension in mice so far resulted from a similar spirit, there one mouse lived very close to 5 years. Genius or foolish, we shall see, in any case it will be interesting...

The results will help in the search for life prolonging treatments for both animals and humans. This project will be the first step toward the creation a research facility for automated testing of lifespan interventions.

What is the significance of this project?

You never know for sure whether the drugs you take shorten your lifespan or make you live longer and healthier until lifespan experiments with them are conducted. Whole pharmaceutical industry is focused on curing specific diseases, so it rarely tests long-term effects of the drugs it produces.

We want to change this! We strongly believe that extended healthy lifespan must be one of the core goals of Medicine and Healthcare. To make it happen new ways of curing ageing (as ageing-related diseases and feebleness are the main causes of death in the world) should be discovered and tested.

This experiment is very special. We do something not pedestrian: we mix things that seem to robustly extend healthy lifespan.

Whether treated animals will live healthier and longer is not obvious. In similar experiments (hardly done in mammals), combinations is sometimes synergetic and sometimes detrimental. This is an attempt, a pilot experiment in this field to see if other approaches than one-additional-drug-at-a-time can make sense. The hope is that those drugs are sufficiently robust and different in their life extending effects to mostly work in synergy. But in the field of long term health ignorance prevails, so only a test can tell us more.

With this campaign we open new way how ageing research can be funded and how citizens can directly help scientists to work more on finding ways to extend healthy lifespan, a thing that is important for everyone.

What are the goals of the project?

There are *right now* in the lab a sufficient number of aged mice (~20 month) of C57Bl6 strain to start a lifespan test. We have C57BL6 males as well as females aged ~20 months. Mice will be splitted into 2 test (females and males) and 2 control groups (24 animals each). The test will be blinded.

The food of the treated mice will contain:

* an α-adrenergetic receptor blocker (metoprolol). Potential action: avoids too fast heart beats

* an mTOR inhibitor (everolimus; similar action as rapamycin). Potential action: puts cells in an active and resistance mode.

* metformin. Potential action: normalises blood and IGF-1 levels at low levels. Also, potential similarities with everolimus.

* simvastatin and ramipril: the effect of simvastatin on mouse lifespan was first found to be below statistical evidence, but the synergy with ramipril, first found on drosophila, lead to a statistical increase of lifespan in mice. Simvastatin decreases the amount of LDL cholesterol (considered as 'bad' by some) in the blood. Ramiprill, an ACE inhibitor, avoids hypertension.

* aspirin. As the small doses uses, it is believed to have reduced side effects while improving blood flow and therefore reduce cardiovascular risks, and potentially also preventing incidence of some cancers.

Crowdfunding is needed to buy these drugs and food for animals and to make conditions of the experiments even better (that will make results more reliable).

If we wait any longer the mice will be in the "strong dying phase" of their life and it will make the experiment useless. So we cannot wait for academic money, we have used out pocket money to start the experiment and count on the help of the Crowd to continue.

Also, additional money would help prepare other experiments of that type.

Last but not least, we are happy to share such exciting moments but also the surprising notion that long term health is virtually "abandonned" by current biomedical and health care systems and that such experiments are of crucial importance for healthy populations.