Recent study results that an 80-year-old drug most commonly used as a topical antifungal agent may have the potential to slow down the aging process.
Clioquinol is best known as an antifungal and antiprotozoal drug; however its use as an antiporotozoal drug ended when it was withdrawn from the market after being blamed for an outbreak of subacute myelo-optic neuropathy (SMON) in Japan in the 1960s, although some researchers contest that clioquinol was the true cause of the outbreak.
Despite being associated with neurotoxicity, research in the last few years has suggested that clioquinol may be able to reverse the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease. These findings have left scientists puzzled as to how one drug could have similar effects on three very different neurodegenerative diseases. However, scientists are McGill University believe that they may have solved this puzzle.
Dr. Siegfried Hekimi and colleagues found that clioquinol is a “very powerful inhibitor” of a protein called CLK-1, or clock-1, which is linked to aging. “Because clock-1 affects longevity in invertebrates and mice, and because we’re talking about three age-dependent neurodegenerative diseases, we hypothesize that clioquinol affects them by slowing down the rate of aging,” says Dr Hekimi. Exactly how clioquinol inhibits CLK-1 remains uncertain, however suspects that metals may play a role because the drug is a metal chelators.
Dr Hekimi conclude: “The implication is that we can change the rate of aging. This might be why clioquinol is able to work on this diversity of diseases that are all age-dependent.”
News release: Old gastrointestinal drug slows aging, McGill researchers say. McGill University January 8th 2009.
