John E Wilkinson
Pathologist at the University of Michigan who examines animal tissues for aging and cancer studies, and first author of the 2012 paper showing that rapamycin slows many signs of aging in mice
Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine and Department of Pathology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (papers 2012–2026)
Portrait: LinkedIn
When rapamycin was shown to lengthen mouse lifespan in 2009, a key question remained: did it slow aging itself, or did it simply delay the cancers that kill most laboratory mice? John Wilkinson was first author of the 2012 Aging Cell paper (WIL2012), with Richard Miller as senior author, that tackled this question by looking closely at many tissues. A pathologist studies tissue under the microscope to find disease and damage.
In mice given rapamycin, age-related changes in the heart, liver, adrenal glands, endometrium and tendon developed more slowly, and the age-related fall in spontaneous activity was smaller. The paper also reported harms: treated mice had more testicular degeneration and more cataracts. Because the benefits showed up across many organs, beyond a drop in tumours, the authors argued that rapamycin slows aging more broadly. These results are from mice.
PubMed lists Wilkinson at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on dozens of papers, often as the pathologist on mouse studies from other groups. The most recent, from 2026 in Nature Immunology, is a study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on how the fat-sensing factor PPAR-delta changes the balance between cancer cells and immune cells.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | A | Rapamycin slows aging in mice WIL2012 First author: showed that rapamycin slows age-related change in heart, liver, adrenal gland, endometrium and tendon in mice, while increasing cataracts and testicular degeneration. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 3
People with a profile here who share at least one study with John E Wilkinson.
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- David E. Harrison Led the Jackson Laboratory site of the NIA Interventions Testing Program. His 2009 Nature paper showed that rapamycin extends the lifespan of genetically diverse mice even when feeding starts at 20 months of age, which the authors described as the first pharmacological extension of lifespan in both sexes of a mammal
- Randy Strong Leads the San Antonio site of the NIA Interventions Testing Program, which tests each compound in parallel at three sites under one shared protocol. He first-authored the program's reports on resveratrol and other supplements (2012) and on rapamycin combined with acarbose (2022)
- Richard A. Miller Leads the University of Michigan site of the NIA Interventions Testing Program. His papers showed that rapamycin extends mouse lifespan when started in middle age, and that the size of the benefit depends on dose and differs between males and females
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