Some interesting news out of McGill university…although there is a healthy dose of skepticism at this stage of the research…
Recent animal studies have shown that clioquinol – an 80-year old drug once used to treat diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders – can reverse the progression of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. Scientists, however, had a variety of theories to attempt to explain how a single compound could have such similar effects on three unrelated neurodegenerative disorders.
“Clioquinol is a very powerful inhibitor of clock-1,” explained Hekimi, McGill’s Strathcona Chair of Zoology and Robert Archibald & Catherine Louise Campbell Chair in Developmental Biology. “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.”
The exact mechanism of how clioquinol inhibits CLK-1 is still under investigation, Hekimi said. “One possibility is that metals are involved as clioquinol is a metal chelator,” he explained. Chelation is a type of binding to metal ions and is often used to treat heavy metal poisoning.
Hekimi is optimistic but cautious when asked whether clioquinol could eventually become an anti-aging treatment.
“The drug affects a gene which when inhibited can slow down aging,” he said. “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.”
However, he admits to being concerned about how people may interpret his results.
“The danger is that you can buy a kilogram of this compound at a chemical wholesaler, but we don’t want people to start experimenting on themselves. Clioquinol can be a very toxic substance if abused, and far more research is required.”
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