Medical Professor Develops Powerful Drugs

A new class of drugs, based on a chemical found in red wine, may provide a cure for type 2 diabetes and other age-related illnesses, according to a report published yesterday co-authored by a Harvard Medical School professor.

Medical School pathologist David Sinclair and researchers at a Cambridge pharmaceutical firm he helped found said they developed a chemical 1,000 times more potent than the resveratrol found in red wine and grapes.

A team led by Sinclair previously discovered that resveratrol can stimulate the SIRT1 gene, which controls aging. But it took them several years to develop a compound powerful enough to potentially be used as a drug for humans.

“The new work is a breakthough because it shows you can develop drug-like molecules that are one thousand time more potent than resveratrol,” Sinclair said in a phone interview yesterday. The report was published in yesterday’s edition of the journal Nature.

Sinclair said the new chemical has shown promising results when human cells were treated with it in the laboratory. Testing on people will begin next year. “We’ll know very soon if we’re right,” he said.

The new report may signal progress in the study of how age-related illnesses can be treated—an area where breakthroughs are rare. “It should be useful to have a published scientific study in an area having no shortage of enthusiasts yet thus far lacking in convincing evidence,” chemistry professor Stuart L. Schreiber, who teaches Science B-47, “Molecules of Life,” wrote in an e-mail.

The age-related illnesses that the resveratrol-like compound may help treat include type 2 diabetes—by far the most prevalent kind of diabetes among the 20 million Americans suffering from the disease.

“I think that to make a small pill that could treat diabetes is a milestone towards achieving a cure,” Sinclair said.

The new drug could also be used to treat other age-related illnesses such as heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

“What I think is as exciting is that these new molecules will be tested in people next,” Sinclair said. “We’re not talking about a lifetime away anymore.”

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