To mitigate the harmful effects of IL-11, the researchers injected 75-week-old mice with an anti-IL-11 antibody.
Scientists at Imperial College London and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Medical Sciences have blocked IL-11, a protein that can help extend the healthy lives of mice by more than 25%.
It provides encouraging insights and can have a similar effect on people.
The researchers collaborated with Singapore’s Duke NUS Medical School. By genetically modifying mice lacking the interleukin 11 (IL-11) gene, researchers were able to examine the effects of IL-11.
During their investigation, the researchers also injected 75-week-old mice with an anti-IL-11 antibody, a drug that counteracts the negative effects of IL-11.
The new findings “suggest that this potential treatment may also have an impact on longevity, but separate clinical trials are needed to know for sure,” according to the study, which was published in the journal Nature.
Still, IL-11 stands out from many other protein and rejuvenation therapies that have shown promise in animal models but encountered hurdles on the way to human clinical trials.
“There is a real opportunity to translate this into clinical therapies,” says Cathy Slack of the University of Warwick in the UK, a researcher in the biology of aging.
“And that’s where the field is kind of stuck at the moment.
Yet researchers have long recognized chronic inflammation as a risk factor for aging-related disorders.
This means that the body retains broken proteins and other components as it ages. According to experts, this causes another immune system to be affected and often gets infected.
This infection can lead to further inflammatory reactions that can result in cancer or other autoimmune diseases.
Although IL-11 has long been studied, the link between the protein and aging was unknown until molecular biologist Anissa Widjaja made a serendipitous discovery.
