Chris Patil notes a number of recent papers on progress towards the commercial deployment of sirtuin activators - calorie restriction mimetics, in other words - and ostacles yet in the way: "Given the current regulatory laws in the US and elsewhere, getting drugs approved as anti-aging therapies per se is difficult to say the least, approaching the level of practical impossibility. Beyond the political and sociological challenges of defining aging as a pathology in itself are a huge number of nuts-and-bolts issues: How does one measure successful delays in aging? How does one define a Phase I (or II, or III) population, and secure subject compliance over the relevant timescales? But suppose compounds with anti-aging properties (to be more precise, I should say, 'compounds that target pathways known to modulate lifespan in experimental organisms') are approved for clinical treatment of acute or shorter-term chronic diseases, where the trial populations and standards for efficacy are easier to define. We'd then have anti-aging drugs ready for off-label use after they've been proven effective for their on-label purpose."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://ouroboros.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/toward-sirtuin-activators-in-the-clinic/
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