According to recent research, people living in the Gulf States “age faster biologically than chronologically”, with high rates of obesity and diabetes caused by a rich diet and too little exercise, which poses a specific threat to the future of this country. To avoid the consequences linked to this phenomenon, the kingdom is testing drugs that can slow down the aging trend, as detailed in the journal “Technology review” from the prestigious MIT university in the United States.
Gulf state biggest funder of anti-aging drug research
Through an NGO called the Hevolution Foundation, the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia plans to spend up to $1 billion a year to support basic research into the biology of aging, which aims to extend the number of years of life by good health of people. The fund is managed by Mehmood Khan, a former Mayo Clinic endocrinologist and former chief scientist of PespsiCo, who was recruited as CEO in 2020. Felipe Sierra, specialist in “geroscience” and former chief of the division of biology of aging at the US National Institutes of Health, was hired to be the chief scientific officer of Hevolution. Also on the board are Evgeny Lebedev, a Russian-British businessman, US billionaire Ron Burkle, and Andrew Liveris, the former CEO of Dow Chemical.
The fund also plans to go further by supporting drug studies and finding solutions to bring to market so patients can actually benefit. The objective is to carry out tests for “treatments for which the patent has expired or which have never been obtained”says Mehmood Khan.
A drug against diabetes, the main avenue against aging
Metformin is an old diabetes drug, which is attracting interest because a large study of British medical records showed that diabetics who took it lived longer than expected, and even longer than healthy people. Hevolution would have agreed to finance a third of the cost of the very expensive “TAME” trials (for “Targeting Aging with Metformin”), the first large-scale test for a drug supposed to delay aging in humans. The agreements for this funding have not yet been finalized.
Delay the care of the elderly, poorly received in current structures
According to Technology Review, no one knows if metformin will work to delay aging in humans. Either way, the trial could pave the way for other geroscience drugs to be tested. So far, no drug has been shown to be effective in delaying old age.
The drop in the number of births and the increase in the number of deaths is also leading France towards a growing aging of its population. According to INED projections, the population in France should increase until 2044, before declining until 2070. This aging will not be without consequences, particularly at the level of the pension system, but also of reception in Ehpads, structures that are not able to properly accommodate this growing population of elderly people.