AI helps create drug that may slow down ageing by 6 years in few weeks

We have often heard about technology helping us live longer. And now, it seems that AI might do just that. As per a new study, an AI-generated drug showed that it could slow down ageing by as much as 6 years within a matter of weeks.A drug created with the help of AI may slow down aging by years as per a new study. (Representational image made with AI)It is no secret that we humans don’t like ageing. Over the years, there have been several attempts to find a way to stop or at least slow down ageing. As per a new study, a drug, developed with the help of AI, may be able to do just that – slow down ageing as much as 6 weeks within a few weeks of dosage.As per a study published in Nature Biotechnology, this effect was shown by the drug Rentosertib. Rentosertib was developed by Insilico Medicine primarily for a chronic lung disease. But the company says that data from a clinical trial suggests an effect on markers linked to ageing.The findings come from a Phase IIa trial conducted in China in 2023 and 2024. As per the study, the ageing analysis covered 42 participants. Across six separate ageing clocks, the company said patients given Rentosertib showed a drop in predicted biological age after treatment, while those given a placebo or no treatment saw little change, or their biological age stayed the same or increased.Drug slows down biological ageingIn the trial, researchers used six ageing clocks built by independent groups, including teams at Insilico, Harvard University and Peking University. These tools estimate biological age rather than chronological age by analysing how well cells, tissues and organs are functioning, including chemical and protein changes in the body. Insilico collected blood at multiple points during the trial and worked with external researchers to study changes in proteins. According to the company, all six clocks showed a younger predicted biological age after 12 weeks of treatment. The strongest effect appeared earlier in the trial. Insilico said that four weeks after the initial dose, patients taking Rentosertib saw their average biological age fall by as much as six years on one clock."If your biological age is lower, you are likely to die later,” Insilico Medicine founder Alex Zhavoronkov said. He also cautioned that the results were still early and the long-term health effects in larger groups remain unknown. The dosage varied across groups. In the 30 mg twice-daily group, the drop was about three to four years across most clocks, while a separate analysis of the 60 mg once-daily group showed reductions of about 2.7 to 3.5 years at Week 4 across four chronological clocks.What is Rentosertib?Rentosertib was created using AI tools that Insilico has been building for more than a decade. Founded in 2014 by Latvian-Canadian biotechnologist Alex Zhavoronkov, the company first used neural-network systems to study large sets of data, including patient health records, blood tests and scientific papers, to identify proteins linked to disease.It then used another system to study protein shapes and how they bind to other molecules, with the aim of generating new drug molecules. The company used that approach to develop Rentosertib.While the drug has shown promising signs in the trial, Insilico has not tested the anti-ageing effect in healthy people, and Rentosertib is still years away from regulatory approval even for sick patients.The study also adds to a wider effort to use AI in accelerating drug discovery. Moderna recently revealed that its personalised cancer vaccine, intismeran autogene, had made a major breakthrough in treating patients with late-stage melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer. This vaccine was designed with the help of AI.Previously, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had written a long post on X addressing public trust in AI. In the post, he accepted that it was time for AI companies to actually “cure cancer” instead of promising to do so.- EndsPublished On: Sep 8, 2026 09:31 IST