Scientists at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals say they’ve created a new drug that mimics the ingredient in red wine linked to longevity as well as the cell structures that power endurance athletes, such as Lance Armstrong, Bloomberg News writes.

The new molecule is 1,000 times more potent than the wine derivative, resveratrol, and could lead to solutions for diseases of aging including cancer and diabetes, according to authors of a study in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Nature (subscription required).

Researchers tested about 500,000 molecules for abilities to activate the immune-system booster SIRT1, the enzyme credited with resveratrol’s ability to extend lifespan by 30 to 70 percent in organisms from yeast and worms to flies and mice. Human testing on the most promising ones will begin next year, says David Sinclair, an author of the study.

“These are real drugs. This is not something out of red wine anymore,” Sinclair, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School in Boston and co-founder of Sirtis, tells Bloomberg. The study is “proof of a principle that you can put something into the food supply that will ward off and treat the diseases of aging in a single pill.”

Mice and rats given three of the molecules responded like those in other experiments testing extreme calorie-restricting diets, even though the rodents continued to eat and weigh the same. They showed increased insulin sensitivity, lower blood- sugar levels and more powerful mitochondria, the “power packs of the cell” that diminish with age, Bloomberg writes.

“That’s where it gets interesting,” Sinclair says. If you give resveratrol to a normal mouse, it can run twice as far because it has many more mitochondria, he said. Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has extra mitochondria that power his endurance abilities, Sinclair explains.

“The goal is not to make Lance Armstrongs of everyone, but you can imagine that it would boost the energy of someone who is frail and weak,” Sinclair tells Bloomberg.

Mice in the study were given diets to induce diabetes, and the rats were a species bred to resist insulin. After one week, blood sugar levels in the mice returned to normal and the rats experienced increased insulin sensitivity.

Sirtris has about 140 patents and patent applications related to the so-called aging gene, and some of the most effective treatments for boosting SIRT1 were discovered after the Nature study was submitted for publication a year ago, Sinclair said. Results from animal studies of those drugs will be released next year, he said.

Sirtris was founded by Sinclair, chairman of its scientific board, and Christoph Westphal, the chief executive officer, to study activators of SIRT1 and its related class of enzymes. Other treatments for diseases of aging rely on complicated technology that may take years to develop, Westphal said.

“In contrast to stem cell treatments that might be 20 to 30 years away, these are four to five,” Sirtris ceo Chris Westphal tells Bloomberg.

The sirtuin gene was first reported by Leonard Guarente, a biology professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose lab also discovered the aging benefits of restricted diets in mice. Sinclair, his post-doctoral student at the time, moved to Harvard in 1999 to develop drugs that could act in the same way. He discovered resveratrol in 2003. Guarente co-founded a competitor, Elixir Pharmaceuticals, in 1999 and joined Sirtris as co-chairman of its science advisory board on Nov. 19.

Source: Bloomberg News