Girish Harinath
Designs, analyses and writes up human studies of repurposed drugs such as rapamycin at a longevity telehealth company, turning trial and real-world prescription data into peer-reviewed evidence
Research Scientist, Division of Research and Applied Sciences, AgelessRx, Ann Arbor, MI · Researcher, Driscoll Lab, Department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, Rutgers University · Contributor, NIA Caenorhabditis Intervention Testing Program (CITP)
Division of Research and Applied Sciences, AgelessRx (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) ↗
Harinath is the second author of the PEARL trial report, the first completed year-long randomized, placebo-controlled trial of rapamycin taken for healthy human aging rather than for disease (NCT04488601, AgelessRx as sponsor with UCLA as collaborator). Participants aged 50–85 took either placebo or 5 mg or 10 mg of compounded rapamycin once a week for 48 weeks, and the endpoint the team had committed to in advance was visceral fat measured by DXA scan. That endpoint did not move at all, while secondary measures — lean tissue mass and self-reported pain in women on 10 mg, and self-reported well-being on 5 mg — did improve.
His own first-author work explains part of why a null result there is hard to interpret. In a 2025 GeroScience paper he showed that compounded rapamycin, the formulation PEARL used, reaches only about 31% of the blood level per milligram that commercial sirolimus does, that blood levels peak roughly two days after a dose, and that different people on the same dose end up in very different places. In practical terms: a weekly 10 mg compounded tablet may inhibit mTOR far less than the number on the label suggests, which is an argument for measuring rapamycin in blood rather than trusting the dose.
Before joining AgelessRx he worked in Monica Driscoll's lab at Rutgers on the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, co-authoring studies on how swim exercise protects aging muscle and neurons, how spaceflight changes neuronal shape, and how metformin and antioxidants extend or shorten life depending on the animal's genetic background. That last theme carries into his human work: in a 2024 review he argued that quality-of-life questionnaires such as the SF-36 should count as real endpoints in geroscience trials, because waiting decades for disease and death outcomes is not a practical way to test drugs meant to keep people healthy.
Milestones in the Atlas
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | H | Influence of rapamycin on safety and healthspan metrics after one year: PEARL trial results MOE2025 Second author on the PEARL results paper, the AgelessRx report of the 48-week safety profile, DXA body-composition outcomes and quality-of-life measures for weekly low-dose rapamycin. |
Co-authors in the Atlas
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Girish Harinath.
- Mauricio Moel Analyses trial and real-world data on repurposed longevity drugs at AgelessRx and led the reporting of the PEARL rapamycin trial
- Sajad Zalzala Family physician who co-founded AgelessRx and, as senior author, co-led PEARL, a year-long randomised trial of low-dose intermittent rapamycin in healthy older adults