Research Perspective|Volume 3, Issue 7|pp 685—691

Progeria, rapamycin and normal aging: recent breakthrough

Mikhail V. Blagosklonny¹

¹Department of Cell Stress Biology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, BLSC, L3-312, Elm and Carlton Streets, Buffalo, NY, 14263, USA

Received: July 5, 2011Accepted: July 7, 2011Published: July 8, 2011

Copyright: © 2011 Blagosklonny et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

A recent discovery that rapamycin suppresses a pro-senescent phenotype in progeric cells not only suggests a non-toxic therapy for progeria but also implies its similarity with normal aging. For one, rapamycin is also known to suppress aging of regular human cells. Here I discuss four potential scenarios, comparing progeria with both normal and accelerated aging. This reveals further indications of rapamycin both for accelerated aging in obese and for progeria.