What is 'Robust Mouse Rejuvenation' RMR?
In order to determine whether we have made enough progress in developing these therapies for mice, we need some sort of milestone that says, OK, this is good enough to be, what we call, a real proof of concept. That if we could do this in humans, it would really work. And the milestone that I've defined that I think is an appropriate one, I call Robust Mouse Rejuvenation. What it involves is, first of all, it involves treating mice that have nothing inherently wrong with them. A lot of mouse strains don't live very long anyway. They live maybe only a year and a half or two years because there are congenital problems that they have. And if you make those sorts of mice live a bit longer, then you haven't really shown anything for sure. You may have only fixed the particular problem that they had. Whereas if you take the strain of mice that are already unusually long-lived, let's say they live already three years. Then you've really got no chance of increasing their lifespan except by something that really properly combats their aging. So Robust Mouse Rejuvenation is defined as taking both mice and increasing their life span. But there's more: first of all, we have to say how much you need to increase their lifespan. And I say that for this mouse, what we need to do is to increase their lifespan by two more years, so that they live for an average of five years. Finally, there's third criterion incorporated in the definition of Robust Mouse Rejuvenation, which is that the mice should not have any treatment at all until they're already two years old, with one year to live unless they get any treatment.
