AI-designed drug slowed biological ageing

Six separate ageing clocks, run on the same 43 patients, all pointed in the same direction: a younger predicted biological age after 12 weeks on an experimental drug.

Six separate ageing clocks, run on the same 43 patients, all pointed in the same direction: a younger predicted biological age after 12 weeks on an experimental drug.

The drug, rentosertib, was developed by Insilico Medicine to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring lung disease for which there is no cure. Its potential anti-ageing effect emerged as a secondary finding.

Rentosertib’s molecular structure was created using Insilico’s Chemistry42 platform, an AI-based drug discovery technology.

Ageing clocks work differently: they estimate biological age from measurements such as protein levels or DNA methylation patterns.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis causes lung tissue to scar and thicken to the point that oxygen cannot be exchanged effectively from the lungs into the bloodstream, and death can occur within a few years of diagnosis. Rentosertib inhibits a protein known as TNIK, a hub gene associated with both fibrosis and ageing that was identified through Insilico’s PandaOmics platform.

A Phase IIa trial showed a statistically significant increase in lung capacity, and the company has progressed the drug to Phase III, involving about 320 patients in China.

One of the ageing clocks was developed by Vadim Gladyshev of Harvard Medical School. He described the study as the most convincing evidence so far of a reduction in predicted biological age.

Gladyshev also emphasised that the number of participants was small and that ageing clocks are not perfect predictors. Only patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis were tested in the study, so its effects on ageing in healthy people or other conditions remain unknown.

Insilico is already treating IPF as a “gateway indication”, with plans to test TNIK-targeting drugs against other age-related conditions. Tel Aviv University longevity researcher Evelyne Bischop and other scientists have pointed to the study’s design, pairing an AI-discovered drug with AI-based ageing clocks, as a template other longevity trials are likely to follow.