The tree · Energy and fuel sensing
A drug makes people live longer in good health
A pill that slows ageing itself, rather than treating one disease, so that the people who take it live longer and stay well longer. Rapamycin does this in mice, even when started late in life, and several other drugs have followed it. None has been shown to do it in people, because a trial that could show it takes many years, and that gap between the animal result and the human one is exactly what the stage ladder is for. People already take rapamycin and metformin in the hope of it; hope is not a record.
What would count
A peer-reviewed, controlled trial in people reports that those taking the drug lived longer, or stayed free of age-related disease longer, than those taking a placebo, by a margin the trial was designed to detect. Swallowing the pill is not the leaf; the extra healthy years are, so the first-human rung needs a human result, not a human volunteer. For the clinic rung: a regulator approves the drug to slow ageing or delay age-related disease, or a named clinical setting prescribes it for that purpose in routine care on the strength of such a trial.
Who settles it: The peer-reviewed trial report, and the regulator's approval record if it comes to that.
Where it stands
Shown in animals. Reached 8 July 2009, on the record of Harrison and 13 others, 8 July 2009 (doi.org). Next rung within 5 to 20 years.
This is one of the 5 treatments shared with the sister site The Upgrade Tree, which keeps its own record of it at the same test and the same stage. The weekly reading checks that the two stages agree.
When it reaches the clinic: the project's estimate
This is the one thing on this page that is a judgment rather than a record. The project's estimate of the year it reaches the clinic is 2045, no earlier than 2034 and no later than 2095; the model draws from that range every run, with the likely year the most probable draw. Set 16 October 2026, a first pass awaiting an outside review.
| Rung | No earlier than | Most likely | No later than | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First human | 2031 | 2038 | 2065 | |
| In clinical use | 2034 | 2045 | 2095 | feeds the year at the top |
Why. A trial that could show extra healthy years in people needs thousands of participants and most of a decade, and the one designed for it has waited since 2015 for money. The likely year for the first human assumes such a trial, of metformin or a successor, starts by 2029 and reads out positive in the late 2030s; the clinic rung follows a few years later, likely in the mid 2040s. The earliest assumes a regulator accepts a marker of ageing as proof (a leaf on the measuring branch) and a shorter trial reads out in the early 2030s; the latest allows for the trial never being funded and the rung reached, if at all, by a drug approved for something else and then shown to add years in a records study late in the century.
Changes to this record
None since it was written on 16 October 2026. Every change to the stage or the estimate lands here with its date, the old value, the new one and the reason, and a change to the estimate never happens because a number looked wrong: it needs a dated reason and a source.
The last readings
- 17 October 2026 Quiet
Nothing in the window: no trial reporting longer life or longer disease-free life in people was found dated 2026-10-10 to 2026-10-17. Two older things were seen that the record does not name and that fall short of the test: a Nature Biotechnology report of September 2026 (exact date not seen) that the lung-disease drug rentosertib lowered six ageing-clock readings in 42 patients over twelve weeks, which is a clock result for the measuring branch and not extra years; and the VITAL-H trial announced by UT Health San Antonio on 2026-02-25, funded with up to 38 million dollars by the United States agency ARPA-H, which plans to give rapamycin, dapagliflozin or semaglutide against placebo to 726 adults in their sixties for three years, with a composite of physical and mental function (intrinsic capacity) as its outcome rather than lifespan or time to disease, and which in April 2026 was still waiting for ethics approval. The TAME search is listed under the metformin leaf too; it found no funding news in the window.source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4
What the story so far says about it
On the record
- 8 July 2009Rapamycin fed late in life extends lifespan in genetically heterogeneous mice
- 3 May 2016The dog aging project: translational geroscience in companion animals
- 2 February 2022An open science study of ageing in companion dogs
Notes
The record is the 2009 report from the National Institute on Aging's testing programme, in which rapamycin fed to mice from twenty months of age (old, for a mouse) extended their lives. Human trials exist: a year-long rapamycin trial in healthy adults published in April 2025 measured body composition and blood markers, not lifespan, and found little; the metformin trial designed to measure time to age-related disease had not enrolled anyone when this was written. The Upgrade Tree keeps the same leaf at shown in animals; the weekly reading checks the two stages agree. The separate leaves on this branch for rapamycin, metformin and the GLP-1 drugs hold the narrower human results; this one holds the lifespan question itself.
Not yet verified
These facts in the record were written from memory or from a secondary source and have not yet been checked against the paper, the regulator's record or the registry. Nothing here is presented as settled until it is cleared, by checking it and either deleting the line or correcting the record.
- That TAME had still not enrolled anyone as of mid-2026, for lack of money, rests on 2026 web coverage only; no statement from the trial team or its funder was read, no ClinicalTrials.gov entry was found, and some 2026 pages claim the opposite without sources.