Friday’s NYTimes story:

A trans-Atlantic dispute has opened up between two camps of researchers pursuing a gene that could lead to drugs that enhance longevity. British scientists say the longevity gene is “nearing the end of its life,” but the Americans whose work is under attack say the approach remains as promising as ever.

Here’s a link to Nature News story:

In a paper published today in Nature, researchers report that overexpressing a sirtuin gene in two model organisms — the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster — does not boost longevity as had been previously reported. Instead, the authors argue that the longer lifespan originally seen was the result of

But Leonard Guarente, a sirtuin researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who published the original C. elegans work in 20012, argues that the longevity link is real and that the new paper is just “a bump in the road”. “Our data are rock solid,” he says. “I stand by them, and they have been replicated in other labs.”

Here’s The Globe story(Subscription required) :

It cites an accompanying by article by Guarente qualifying his 2001 paper by noting that that the life extension was much smaller than first reported.

The original research drew immense scientific and public excitement to proteins called sirtuins, and the field heated up as later studies showed that an ingredient found in red wine could activate those proteins. Cambridge-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals began a race to create drugs that could target sirtuins, and the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline took a big bet on the approach when it bought the biotech company for $720 million.

Glaxo told the Globe that the new results in flies and worms do not directly affect the questions the company is studying because there is other research confirming the data confirming the role sirtuins play in disease of aging.

Here’s a 2009 MIT profile of Leonard Guarente:

Few scientists believed that aging might be controlled by a single gene (or small group of genes).

Guarente turned that view around — and pioneered a new field of study — with his discovery of so-called longevity genes, which dramatically boost the lifespan of yeast, worms, mice and potentially humans. The human version of the gene, known as SIRT1, is now the target of several drugs in development to treat the diseases of aging, including diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease.

Here’s how Sirtris describes its ongoing research to find drugs based on the MIT findings:

Founded in 2004, Sirtris was one of the first pharmaceutical companies focused on the sirtuin platform and today remains the leader of innovative drug discovery. Preclinical research indicates that the sirtuins play important roles in pathways for multiple diseases of aging, including Type 2 Diabetes, as well as neurodegenerative, cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases.

Sirtris researchers are working to translate this research into a potential new class of pharmaceuticals to treat diseases of aging, offering the ability for people to live longer, healthier lives

Xconomy Boston:

I recently had the chance to hear Harvard professor David Sinclair talk publicly about his and GSK’s research into sirtuin activators. Sinclair was the scientific founder of Sirtris and he reported at a forum on longevity in Cambridge, MA, that GSK has high hopes of near-term confirmation in mice that some sirtuin activators do extend lifespan. Based on its continued investment, GSK still believes that the $720 million acquisition of Sirtris in 2008 was a smart one.

The Nature report, just the latest in a series of publications that question the sirtuin-longevity link, will be even tougher for Sinclair and other sirtuin researchers to overcome.

More below:

• Wellcome Trust
• Tech Review