Buckyballs Prolong Life? Really?

[Raphael]

From the latest post on In the Pipeline Derek Lowe looks at a paper which shows that rodents given Buckyballs (C60) had their lifespan prolonged by 90% over that of the control groups.

In The Pipe Line

I'm really, really not sure what to make of this paper (PDF). It's from a team that was studying the long-term toxicology of C60 (fullerene, "buckyballs") by giving them to rats as a solution in olive oil. The control groups were water and olive oil without C60. The compound has already been shown to have no noticeable short-term toxic effects, so they probably didn't expect anything dramatic in the lower-dose long-term mode.

Wrong. What they found was that the fullerene/olive oil group had their life spans extended by some 90%, which would make this mixture perhaps the most efficacious life-extended treatment ever seen in a rodent model. This is a very odd and interesting result.

[Post Continues]

© source where applicable

As the comments on the post note there are some BIG questions that still need explaining.

[phank]

Well, some of the comments seemed quite well informed, and they were skeptical to say the least. Lots of problems with the timing of the publications, with some outright anachronisms (results published before testing performed, or some such). Lots of important information not included. Not to mention the near-doubling of life expentancy is the sort of result that ought to fail the sniff test immediately.

Maybe there will be some follow-up, or replication. Results like these won't be taken seriously without LOTS of that stuff.

[Raphael]

Well, some of the comments seemed quite well informed, and they were skeptical to say the least. Lots of problems with the timing of the publications, with some outright anachronisms (results published before testing performed, or some such). Lots of important information not included. Not to mention the near-doubling of life expentancy is the sort of result that ought to fail the sniff test immediately.

Maybe there will be some follow-up, or replication. Results like these won't be taken seriously without LOTS of that stuff.

Indeed, in reading the comments I checked to see if the Paper's publish date was 1 April. (it wasn't)

[phank]

Well, never forget. "It is wrong to be French."

[Omega Red]

From the latest post on In the Pipeline Derek Lowe looks at a paper which shows that rodents given Buckyballs (C60) had their lifespan prolonged by 90% over that of the control groups.

In The Pipe Line

I'm really, really not sure what to make of this paper (PDF). It's from a team that was studying the long-term toxicology of C60 (fullerene, "buckyballs") by giving them to rats as a solution in olive oil. The control groups were water and olive oil without C60. The compound has already been shown to have no noticeable short-term toxic effects, so they probably didn't expect anything dramatic in the lower-dose long-term mode.

Wrong. What they found was that the fullerene/olive oil group had their life spans extended by some 90%, which would make this mixture perhaps the most efficacious life-extended treatment ever seen in a rodent model. This is a very odd and interesting result.

[Post Continues]

© source where applicable

As the comments on the post note there are some BIG questions that still need explaining.

Last desperate foray to make something useful from C60 after all the money thrown at it. Just one graph (Fig 3a) seems pretty poor to represent a comprehensive analysis of life expectency under what appears to be limited parameters tested. I know these things can get expensive and the ethics paperwork a real pain, but still this should have been more robust. Why not try and alternative carbon nanomaterial (nCB) and also a non-free radical scavenger filler for comprison? Some studies appear to show fullerenes and modified fullerenes have superior antioxidant properties in a testube. I don't feel that they've linked up the oxidative stress tests to the chronic toxicity studies all that well; too speculative.