Insilico Medicine researchers applied six protein-based aging measures to blood from a lung-disease drug trial. The drug, rentosertib, was designed with AI and tested in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The trial ran 12 weeks in China and was randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled. All six measures showed a slower pace of biological aging in treated patients. Measures trained on chronological age tracked the change better than those trained on mortality risk. The authors say the tools cannot separate anti-aging effects from the drug's anti-fibrotic action. Pathway analysis suggested shifts in cell senescence and metabolism alongside the anti-fibrotic effect. Full separation would require testing in healthy volunteers. The work appeared in Nature Biotechnology.
What changed
Aging effects were judged mainly by DNA methylation clocks, which disagreed with each other.
What it unlocks
Adding biological-aging readouts to a disease trial that already collects blood samples.
- 6 proteomic clocks compared
- 42 participants with proteomic data
- 12-week phase 2a trial
- 71 patients randomized, 17 on placebo
What you need to act on it
- serum proteomic profiling at multiple timepoints
- patient consent for ancillary analysis
Sources