At UT Health San Antonio’s Sam and Ann Barshop Institute, researchers are preparing a major new test of an old scientific ambition: whether medicines already on the market can help delay the biological decline that comes with aging.
The study, called VITAL-H, will examine three FDA-approved drugs — rapamycin, semaglutide and dapagliflozin — to see whether they can preserve “healthspan,” or the number of years people live in relatively good health.
UT Health San Antonio says the trial will enroll 726 adults in their 60s and is backed by up to $38 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
Barshop leaders describe VITAL-H as the largest healthy-longevity trial the center has led and say South Texas will be central to recruitment, including Hispanic communities that have often been underrepresented in clinical research.
In a 2009 landmark Barshop study, researchers found rapamycin extended lifespan in mice. This breakthrough established the idea that targeting basic biological mechanisms of aging might delay multiple diseases at once. But that promise remains unproven in humans, and earlier work in marmosets by San Antonio-area researchers suggested the benefits were more modest than enthusiasts had hoped, even as the drug appeared generally safe.
Semaglutide is a GLP-1 receptor agonist and it is a medication that mimics a gut hormone involved in regulating blood sugar, appetite, and digestion. It is already sold in different forms under brand names including Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus. FDA labeling shows it is approved for conditions tied to diabetes and obesity management, not for slowing aging itself.
This popular weight loss drug fits into the Barshop Institute’s research because scientists who study aging are increasingly interested in drugs that affect several major age-related pathways at once rather than targeting a single disease.
Dapagliflozin is a sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor, or SGLT2 inhibitor. It is an FDA-approved prescription drug, sold under the brand name Farxiga, that lowers blood sugar by helping the kidneys remove glucose through urine. It is approved for type 2 diabetes and is also used in certain patients with heart failure and chronic kidney disease. Researchers suspect dapagliflozin may influence some of the underlying biology that links aging to chronic disease.
Because a true lifespan study in humans would take decades, researchers will instead track biological markers and a World Health Organization framework known as “intrinsic capacity,” which measures a person’s overall physical and mental abilities including mobility, cognition, sensory function and vitality.
Participants will be assigned to one of four groups, one for each drug and one placebo arm, and followed over three years.
GUESTS:
Andrew Brack, PhD – Program manager of The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and creator of the Proactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (PROSPR) program, which just announced $144 million in funding across seven institutions nationally, including ours, to identify early markers of aging and conduct the first clinical trials aimed at extending the number of years people live in good health.
Elena Volpi, MD, PhD – Director of the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at UT Health San Antonio, the academic health center of The University of Texas at San Antonio who along with her team of investigators are nationally recognized leaders in healthy longevity research, and will lead the new effort here with up to $38 million of ARPA-H funding as part of the PROSPR program.
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