The tree · Energy and fuel sensing
Metformin delays age-related disease in people who do not have diabetes
Metformin is a cheap diabetes pill taken by hundreds of millions of people, and it acts on the pathways that sense how much fuel a cell has. Records studies in the 2010s suggested that people with diabetes who took it got cancer and heart disease less often, and in 2013 a National Institute on Aging group found that a low dose lengthened the lives of middle-aged mice by about six per cent. A trial designed to test whether it delays age-related disease in older people without diabetes, the TAME trial, was planned in 2015 for three thousand people over six years, and had still not enrolled anyone by mid-2026 for lack of the forty to seventy million dollars it needs, because no company profits from a generic drug.
What would count
A peer-reviewed, controlled trial in people without diabetes reports that those taking metformin reached a first age-related disease (heart disease, cancer, dementia) or death later than those on placebo, by the margin the trial was designed to detect. The animal rung is a longer life in a living animal. For the clinic rung: a regulator approves metformin, or a drug built on its mechanism, to delay age-related disease.
Who settles it: The peer-reviewed trial report; the trial registry; the regulator's approval record for the clinic rung.
Where it stands
Shown in animals. Reached 30 July 2013, on the record of doi.org. Next rung within 5 to 20 years.
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 2043, no earlier than 2036 and no later than 2100; 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 | 2033 | 2037 | 2065 | |
| In clinical use | 2036 | 2043 | 2100 | feeds the year at the top |
Why. If the trial started in 2027 it would read out around 2034, and an approval would follow if the result were positive; the likely year assumes a two-year further delay and a positive result, which the animal and records evidence make less than certain. The earliest is the trial starting next year and reading out positive on schedule; the latest allows for it never running and the rung being reached, if at all, by a successor drug 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 report, registry change, funding announcement or regulator's step on metformin for ageing dated 2026-10-10 to 2026-10-17 was found. The verify item stays open: the 2026 web pages still disagree (one explainer says enrolment is ongoing; one page updated 2026-06-14 says no one has been enrolled and the trial is stalled for lack of money), both are secondary, and the registry entry could not be opened because this session's network refused clinicaltrials.gov; the registry number NCT04370067 came from a search summary and is itself unchecked. One thing seen that the record does not say, outside the window: the ARPA-H-funded VITAL-H trial announced 2026-02-25 (rapamycin, dapagliflozin, semaglutide; 726 adults; 38 million dollars) does not include metformin, so it does not bear on this leaf's test, though it shows that public money for a healthspan trial of generic drugs has been found once.source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4
What the story so far says about it
On the record
- 12 September 2024Metformin decelerates aging clock in male monkeys
- October 2019TAME: A Genuinely Good Use of 75 Million Dollars
- June 2016Metformin as a Tool to Target Aging
- 31 July 2014Can people with type 2 diabetes live longer than those without? A comparison of mortality in people initiated with metformin or sulphonylurea monotherapy and matched, non-diabetic controls
- 4 July 2026The TAME Trial (Targeting Aging with Metformin)
Notes
The leaf is as much about the trial as the drug: it is the clearest case on the tree of a treatment that cannot reach the clinic rung because nobody will pay to find out, and the measuring branch's leaf on a regulator recognising ageing as a treatable condition was written around this trial's design.
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 the TAME trial had enrolled no one as of mid-2026 rests on 2026 web articles that disagree with each other; no registry entry for it was found on 2026-10-17 and no statement from its funder dated 2025 or later could be read.