The most effective anti-aging drug ever tested on a mammal was discovered by accident in 1964 in a soil sample collected from the volcanic ground of Easter Island — and the chemical, now called rapamycin, has been shown to extend the maximum lifespan of laboratory mice by up to 38 per cent

The most effective anti-aging drug ever tested on a mammal was not invented in a laboratory. It was scraped out of the dirt of a Pacific island in 1964 by a Hungarian-Canadian microbiologist who was actually looking for something else entirely. The chemistry that made rapamycin’s discovery possible was, by the standards of 1960s pharmaceutical [...] The post The most effective anti-aging drug ever tested on a mammal was discovered by accident in 1964 in a soil sample collected from the volcanic