Aging Mechanisms and Interventions: What the Evidence Actually Supports

Aging has long been treated as an inevitable backdrop to medicine rather than a process amenable to intervention. That framing is shifting. Decades of research into the molecular biology of aging have revealed conserved genetic pathways, epigenetic clocks, and circulating factors that actively regulate how quickly cells and organs deteriorate. The challenge now is translating those discoveries into interventions that are both effective and safe for human use.

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One of the most durable findings in aging biology is the central role of insulin signaling. According to Dr. Eric Verdin, President and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the genes that control lifespan in model organisms such as C. elegans and Drosophila, identified in the 1990s by researchers including Cynthia Kenyon, Gary Ruvkun, and Linda Partridge, converge on the insulin signaling pathway. This is not a coincidence specific to invertebrates: the NIH Intervention Testing Program, which systematically tests compounds for lifespan extension in mice, has found that most drugs producing positive results also target insulin signaling.