Boy, I’m feeling a little down. I just read an article titled, Fight To Stop Aging Is A Losing Battle. The premise of the article is that all of the anti-aging supplements that have popped up in recent years, are “failures”, and that any effort to extend your life with anti-aging supplements means you are caught in the fantasy of ‘immortality’.
Included as examples of the purveyors of immortality are Christoph Westphal, CEO of Sirtris Parmaceuticals quoting that resveratrol “has the chance to change health care”, as well as the many companies selling resveratrol supplements today.
Further, the author cites a list of other supplements that have been promoted for anti-aging (DHEA; Human Growth Hormone, Acai, Resveratrol, even Calorie Retsriction) pointing out that they all had their day in the sun garnering a lot of attention, but now that the spotlight has faded, so the author’s logic goes, they must each be failures.
The basis for all of this skepticism about anti-aging, and resveratrol in particular, is an article in NewScientist that quotes two studies that cast doubt on the effectiveness of resveratrol’s ability to activate the SIRT1 gene and produce the Sirt1 protein (that plays such an active role in reversing the negative effects of the diseases commonly associated with aging).
The article in NewScientist is interesting because it is very carefully written, it doesn’t actually say anything about whether resveratrol triggers production of the Sirt1 protein. Nor does it mention the reams of research, done mainly at universities around the world, that confirms resveratrol to activate SIRT1.
What the article does reveal, and what it is really about, is the two studies (that claim resveratrol doesn’t activate SIRT1) where commissioned, one apiece, by Amgen and by Pfizer, competitors of GlaxoSmithKline (that now owns Sirtris Pharmaceticals, the company at the forefront of resveratrol research). So whatever the studies reveal about resveratrol, positive or negative, what’s actually going on here is two billion-dollar multi-national drug companies have entered the ring in the upcoming Fight For Resveratrol.
In one corner we have GSK represented by microbiologist prodigy David Sinclair with his high energy former VC, Sirtris CEO Christoph Westphal, and in the other corner we have Amgen and Pfizer represented by, we’re not sure who yet.
If this is indeed the opening round it looks like Amgen and Pfizer are happy to go negative, using ‘researchers’ as their ground troops (I know, I’m mixing metaphors). And it looks like NewScientist could be their mouthpiece. Maybe that’s not true, but it would be better if the reporting they did was a little more factual and not focused so much on quirky innuendo.
So … resveratrol is just a fad, an anti-aging “failure”, huh? Well for something that is “fizzling”, it seems a little odd that two billion-dollar drug companies deem it necessary to engage in a turf war over it. No?
If resveratrol were simply nothing, then Amgen and Pfizer would happily let GlaxoSmithKline run down this blind alley all by themselves. Wouldn’t they?
These two recent studies do say something about resveratrol … that it has a very, very bright future.
