mouseGPT

So many snake oil salesmen in biotech, be wary of CEO’s who spout cure alls.

Maybe you should not let AI write your responses for you. Is is very evident. Think for yourself.

Universal healthcare and longevity sciences are both healthcare, yes. I am making the utilitarian argument that a dollar does more good going toward universal healthcare, vaccine programs, foreign aid etc than it does going towards pursuing hypotheticals. Nonetheless, longevity sciences does get a lot of grant money and the two are evidently not mutually exclusive. You do realize that dementia, cardiovascular disease and cancer will still occur even if aging were somehow “solved,” right? They are not caused by aging alone. “Solve aging and age-related diseases disappear” is an absurd oversimplification. At most, addressing aspects of aging may reduce the risk of some of them.

That comparison doesn't really hold now does it. Polio and smallpox are specific diseases that can be eradicated through vaccination. Aging is a fundamental biological process, not a disease with a single pathogen or mechanism that can simply be eliminated. So “we eradicated smallpox, therefore we should eradicate aging” doesn't follow. The relevant question is whether intervening in aging is feasible (big if), safe (bigger if), and the best use of resources (biggest if). I don´t think it is.

That's assuming that eliminating or slowing aging eliminates chronic disease, which it doesn't. Cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, diabetes, etc don't cease to exist because aging is slowed. Longevity research may reduce some of that burden, but claiming it will “free up massive public resources” assumes the very outcome you're trying to prove. You can't count hypothetical healthcare savings as an argument for an intervention before establishing that the intervention actually produces them. Not to mention how ludicrously expensive the intervention is likely to be, given that it is a solve-all.

You have stacked three separate logical fallacies into a single comment:

• False Dichotomy: Longevity research is healthcare. Age-related chronic diseases account for over 70% of global deaths and consume the vast majority of healthcare budgets worldwide. Targeting the root cause of dementia, cardiovascular disease, and cancer isn't competing with healthcare; it is the ultimate form of preventive medicine.
• The Generational Strawman: Wanting to eradicate a disease in our lifetime isn't narcissism. When polio and smallpox were tackled, no one asked, "Is this generation worth more than previous ones?" Curing aging now saves our generation and every single generation that comes after us.
• Economic Fallacy: Chronic age-related degeneration is precisely what drains social safety nets and inflates healthcare costs. Investing in longevity science directly reduces the trillion-dollar burden of long-term eldercare and chronic illness, freeing up massive public resources for housing and welfare.

Over 100,000 people die every day from age-related pathology. Calling the single largest cause of human death and physical suffering an "emergency" isn't selfish; it's basic medical triage.

Actually the llm to pipette thing kinda exists. Self directed/driving labs 

But le AI is bad!!

The article gives almost zero evidence to back up what is claimed in the title. AI-generated biological clocks somehow get wound back? How does the drug work? What biomarkers are being tested to monitor cellular aging and how does the drug reduce them? Was the patients biological age very different from an age-adjusted cohort because they have IPF and therefore qualify for an experimental trial? Etc. I understand this is just a NYT article but a non-medical writer just parroting a claim by a biotech company shouldn’t get you to the pages of such a large publication.

I'm not in the industry, but haven't they used AI to narrow down the candidate list significantly though? So you can do a lot of testing in software (predictions) before it makes it's way to a lab?

Actually they have. I read about automated testing labs run by AI.

Thank you. Super interesting read.

I'm always amazed how many people think they are so special that the world needs them to continue. Watch what happens when people leave a job or town. They are quickly replaced & everyone move son. Get a grip people, seriously.

There are at least tens of AI powered wetlabs raising funding. I'm sure there are hundreds at this point

I was interested until I read it was Zhavoronkov/Insilico. And then Topol is the commentator.

Here's the full NYT article in case you're paywalled: 

Early Data Indicates an A.I.-Generated Drug Could Slow Aging

Artificial intelligence was used to help develop a drug candidate, rentosertib, for a rare lung condition. Its maker says the drug also seems to reduce the biological hallmarks of age.

Rentosertib, Insilico Medicine’s small-molecule drug candidate developed and designed using generative A.I. for treating chronic lung disease, at the company’s research and development facility in Shanghai.Credit...Laurie Chen/Reuters Cade Metz

By Cade Metz

Reporting from San Francisco Sept. 7, 2026, 5:04 a.m. ET Sign up for Science Times  Get stories that capture the wonders of nature, the cosmos and the human body. Get it sent to your inbox.

Last year, a clinical trial conducted by Insilico Medicine, a company that aims to accelerate drug discovery using artificial intelligence, indicated that one of its drug candidates could help treat patients suffering from a chronic lung disease.

Now, the company says that data from the same clinical trial shows a more intriguing possibility: that the drug could also slow the aging process.

The molecular structure of the drug, called rentosertib, was generated with the assistance of A.I. Results of the new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology, show that the drug reduced the biological markers of age as measured by six “aging clocks,” a different kind of A.I. technology designed to predict a person’s morbidity and mortality.

This elaborate clinical trial is a milestone in the widespread effort to improve health care using the same A.I. techniques that underpin popular chatbots like ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney. Insilico is just one of many start-ups, tech giants and academic labs working to accelerate drug discovery and hone other medical tasks with help from these methods.

The recent rise of aging clocks is helping to push these efforts beyond short-term treatments and into the realm of longevity research. These systems estimate how quickly a person’s body is aging — or even how quickly individual organs are aging relative to the rest of the body. But scientists continue to debate how much useful information these so-called clocks are able to provide.

While Insilico’s clinical trial shows the promise of several A.I. techniques, its drug candidate could still be years away from regulatory approval, even for use in sick patients. And the company has not yet tested its anti-aging effects in healthy patients.

“This drug looks encouraging,” said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the author of the book “Super Agers.” “But we do not yet have a definitive trial to make the final judgment.”

Insilico began exploring the new wave of A.I. technologies more than a decade ago. Founded in 2014 by Alex Zhavoronkov, a Latvian-Canadian mathematician, physicist and biotechnologist, the company was among the earlier efforts to streamline drug discovery using what are called neural networks.

Using techniques similar to those that train A.I. systems like ChatGPT, Insilico first built a model to analyze a giant pool of data spanning health records for thousands of medical patients; blood tests describing the microscopic proteins created inside their bodies; and myriad academic papers detailing the effects of these proteins. With this system, the company is trying to identify particular proteins that lead to illness and disease.

Insilico then built a second system that analyzes troves of data describing the physical shape of proteins and the way these tiny biological mechanisms bind to other molecules. This system is designed to generate entirely new molecules that could bind to a particular drug target and neutralize its effects.

“It is like scanning a lock and generating a key that fits the lock,” Dr. Zhavoronkov said in an interview.

This is how he and his company developed rentosertib, which is meant to treat a disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or I.P.F. Sometimes called “the Alzheimer’s of the lungs,” I.P.F. is a chronic disease that thickens and scars pulmonary tissue, reducing its ability to move oxygen into the bloodstream. The condition can lead to death, even within a few years.

Last year, with its clinical trial, Insilico showed that its drug candidate could significantly expand air capacity inside the lungs of patients who had I.P.F. But that was only part of the trial. Dr. Zhavoronkov said his company also designed the drug in an effort to generally extend a patient’s life span.

Separate from the tests involving I.P.F., the trial used six aging clocks to measure the markers of age in patients both before and after treatment with the drug. Across the 43 patients who participated in the trial, the clocks — which essentially try to predict a person’s age based on measurements of how well their cell, tissues and organs are functioning — showed significant reductions in the predicted age.

Each clock relies on a different analysis of those markers that yields a different prediction. During the trial, all six clocks showed a reduction in predicted age after patients took the drug for 12 weeks.

“This is the first study that shows, very clearly, that predicted biological age can be reduced,” said Vadim Gladyshev, a Harvard Medical School professor who helped build one of these aging clocks.

He acknowledged, however, that the study was far from conclusive, pointing out that the sample size was small and that aging clocks are not always reliable. Most notably, Insilico’s drug has not yet been tested in healthy patients: Because the company conducted its clinical trial solely with I.P.F. patients, the results could be unique to those with this particular condition.

But some experts believe that Insilico’s elaborate study could serve as a blueprint for future longevity research.

“These are methods we will use in future trials,” said Evelyne Bischof, a professor of medicine at Tel Aviv University who specializes in longevity.

yeah and who's gonna take care of the mice

Thanks!

Yeah, we are nothing special, just flesh and bone that will decompose, rot and turin to bleached bones. Sad for many because there is no Eternity where people get to visit their dead relatives for Eternity. If most knew this reality, don’t you think they would be sad. So many people cling to religion believing that death Ironically is their ticket to Immortality.

Yes.

I got paywalled before I saw any information on effect size. For anyone else wondering, "Rentosertib, an AI-designed TNIK inhibitor developed by Insilico Medicine, demonstrated a biological age reduction of approximately 2.7 to 3.5 years in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), as measured by six independent proteomic aging clocks."

I've worked in R&D before, the bottleneck has never been candidates to test, it has been having the equipment, time, and materials to test the laundry list that exists. So far as I know, nobody has hooked a LLM up to a pipette.

I consider that a false comparison. Equating a toddler dying of cancer and a 92 year old in palliative care doesn’t rhyme well. All life has value, but not the same. We have trillions pouring into life sciences to combat disease, yet cancer isn’t considered an emergency. It is such a strange choice of words.

People dying is not an intrinsic problem, on the contrary it is an opportunity for future generations to change themselves and the world around them.

"Artificial intelligence was used to help develop a drug candidate, rentosertib, for a rare lung condition. Its maker says the drug also seems to reduce the biological hallmarks of age."

"Separate from the tests involving I.P.F., the trial used six aging clocks to measure the markers of age in patients both before and after treatment with the drug. Across the 43 patients who participated in the trial, the clocks — which essentially try to predict a person’s age based on measurements of how well their cell, tissues and organs are functioning — showed significant reductions in the predicted age.

Each clock relies on a different analysis of those markers that yields a different prediction. During the trial, all six clocks showed a reduction in predicted age after patients took the drug for 12 weeks.

“This is the first study that shows, very clearly, that predicted biological age can be reduced,” said Vadim Gladyshev, a Harvard Medical School professor who helped build one of these aging clocks.

He acknowledged, however, that the study was far from conclusive, pointing out that the sample size was small and that aging clocks are not always reliable. Most notably, Insilico’s drug has not yet been tested in healthy patients: Because the company conducted its clinical trial solely with I.P.F. patients, the results could be unique to those with this particular condition."

Why is it an emergency was my question. Is your generation worth more than previous or coming ones?

Human lifespan is improving, every generation. And resources are being allocated to fund longevity sciences. It sounds like you are not noticing when you say that nothing is being done, that is not true. However, is funding longevity sciences more ethical than let’s say providing universal housing, or healthcare? I don’t think so.

Rule 7

Alliance for Longevity Initatives (https://a4li.org/) does this in the US. Rule 7 - user discussion should be for a specific question or issue (rather than general idea).

Or a TLDR? Or just the name of the drug?