Can Generative AI Help Us Live Longer? Rentosertib study suggests anti-aging therapies may be a step closer

Insilico Medicine (US) reported yesterday that its idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) clinical candidate, Rentosertib, is effective in reversing the predicted biological age of IPF patients as assessed against six independent proteomic aging clocks.

The discovery of Rentosertib is an interesting story in its own right because both the molecule and its target (TNIK) were identified wholly using generative AI.  TNIK was identified as a novel target implicated in both biological aging and fibrosis, and so was prioritized as a dual-purpose therapeutic target. What is particularly impressive is the speed at which Rentosertib progressed from identification to preclinical studies (18 months), a process which would normally take years. Rentosertib is also reported to be the first AI-generated molecule to progress to advanced clinical trials. 

IPF is a diagnosable disease, and so treatment of IPF is the subject of the ongoing clinical trials, with proteomic analysis of the hallmarks of biological aging being conducted in parallel. Whilst this most recent study demonstrates that biological age can be reversed in patients treated with Rentosertib, it is acknowledged that the most recent study cannot fully separate anti-aging effects from treatment of lung fibrosis. As noted by Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, “The experiment in healthy volunteers is the one I want to see next”. In other words, do we know if this molecule is effective in reversing aging as such?

It is rare for clinical trials to enroll healthy volunteers after initial safety studies (Phase I), and as aging is not considered a diagnosable disease, it would likely be extremely difficult to conduct clinical trials for an anti-aging therapy alone. Insilico's dual-therapy approach avoids this issue by identifying targets involved in both aging and diagnosable diseases (e.g. IPF in the current case), and opens the door to treating disease while simultaneously evaluating and potentially treating aging in the same patient population.  

As more candidate therapies are identified for different targets, it will be interesting to see whether similar anti-aging effects are observed. If so, the data generated from such studies may provide broad clinical evidence that anti-aging therapies are effective and safe, and that aging itself may be a treatable condition. These studies could even provide sufficient evidence for clinical trials in healthy populations focused on treating aging as such. I just hope we get there before I turn 40.

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