Matt Kaeberlein
Extended TOR/aging research from yeast to mice to pet dogs
CEO, Optispan · co-founder & co-director, Dog Aging Project · co-founder, Dog Aging Institute · Affiliate Professor, University of Washington (previously Professor of Pathology) · PhD, MIT (2002)
Dog Aging Institute (Seattle, Washington, USA) ↗ Lab lineagetrained under Stanley Fields → ORCID0000-0002-1311-3421 ↗
Portrait: UW Healthy Aging and Longevity Research Institute
Matt Kaeberlein began his career studying replicative aging in budding yeast, showing that the TOR pathway and its downstream kinase Sch9 regulate yeast lifespan in response to nutrients — among the earliest direct evidence that TOR signalling controls aging itself, not just growth. He then built a career at the University of Washington extending that logic across species.
Kaeberlein has since studied rapamycin's effects on lifespan and healthspan in mice, including transient treatment protocols in middle-aged animals and one of the first randomized controlled trials of short-term rapamycin in companion dogs. He co-founded the Dog Aging Project, which uses pet dogs — a species that shares our environment and ages on a much faster clock — to test whether interventions like rapamycin can extend healthy lifespan in a genetically diverse, real-world population.
The timeline below follows Kaeberlein's contributions gathered in this Atlas.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | M | Regulation of yeast replicative life span by TOR and Sch9 in response to nutrients KAE2005 Shows the TOR pathway and Sch9 regulate yeast replicative lifespan in response to nutrients, among the earliest evidence TOR controls aging. |
| 2006 | M | Extension of chronological life span in yeast by decreased TOR pathway signaling POW2006 Decreased TOR pathway signalling extends chronological lifespan in yeast. |
| 2013 | R | mTOR is a key modulator of ageing and age-related disease JOH2013 The landmark Nature review that put mTOR at the center of aging biology. Lays out the case that inhibiting mTOR extends lifespan across species and guards against a growing list of age-related diseases - while being candid that side effects currently block its use in healthy people. Excellent orientation map for the whole field. |
| 2016 | A | Transient rapamycin treatment can increase lifespan and healthspan in middle-aged mice BIT2016 Shows transient rapamycin treatment can increase both lifespan and healthspan in middle-aged mice. |
| 2017 | A | A randomized controlled trial to establish effects of short-term rapamycin treatment in 24 middle-aged companion dogs URF2017 Reports one of the first randomized controlled trials of short-term rapamycin treatment in companion dogs. |
| 2022 | A | Lifespan benefits for the combination of rapamycin plus acarbose and for captopril in genetically heterogeneous mice STR2022 NIA Interventions Testing Program C2017 cohort. In MALE mice, rapamycin plus acarbose started at 9 months produced a longer lifespan than either of the two prior ITP cohorts treated with rapamycin alone, suggesting the combination is more potent than its components used separately. In FEMALES the combination was neither better nor worse than rapamycin alone, which the authors relate to the limited survival benefit acarbose alone had shown in earlier female cohorts. Captopril gave a small but significant lifespan increase in females (4-5%). CAVEAT (important for how this is cited): the rapamycin-only comparison is HISTORICAL, against prior cohorts, not a concurrent rapamycin-only arm in the same experiment, so 'more potent than either component' is the authors' suggestion rather than a within-experiment randomised comparison. |
| 2023 | A | A masked, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial evaluating safety and the effect on cardiac function of low-dose rapamycin in 17 healthy client-owned dogs BAR2023 In 17 healthy pet dogs, 6 months of low-dose rapamycin (0.025 mg/kg, three times a week) caused no clinically significant adverse events. Echocardiography, however, showed NO statistically significant difference from placebo at 6 or 12 months, so the heart benefit hinted at in the earlier 10-week trial (URF2017) was not reproduced. Owners did report perceived positive changes in behavior or health more often in the rapamycin group (26.8% vs 8.1% of bi-weekly surveys), but that is a subjective, owner-reported outcome. A small safety-focused trial, not designed to test lifespan. |
| 2025 | RT | Test of Rapamycin in Aging Dogs (TRIAD): study design and rationale for a prospective, parallel-group, double-masked, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial of rapamycin in healthy middle-aged dogs from the Dog Aging Project COL2025 Design and rationale paper (protocol), NOT results. TRIAD is a double-masked, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial testing whether rapamycin prolongs lifespan and improves healthspan measures in healthy middle-aged dogs from the Dog Aging Project. Its authors describe it as the first rigorous test of a drug against biological aging with lifespan and healthspan endpoints performed outside the laboratory in any species. Planned size is 580 dogs with 3 years of treatment (NIH-funded, per Texas A&M announcement; 170 dogs enrolled at that time). No efficacy or safety results exist yet, so this must not be cited as evidence of benefit. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 18
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Matt Kaeberlein.
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- Kate E. Creevy 3 shared studies Runs the veterinary side of the Dog Aging Project and leads TRIAD, the trial testing whether rapamycin extends lifespan in pet dogs
- Brian K. Kennedy 2 shared studies Showed with Matt Kaeberlein that reducing TOR or Sch9 signalling extends yeast lifespan in the same way as dietary restriction, and has since championed mTOR as a target for slowing human ageing
- Stanley Fields 2 shared studies Technology-driven geneticist whose yeast screens helped show that lowering TOR signaling extends chronological lifespan in yeast
- Adam B. Salmon Biologist of aging at UT Health San Antonio whose work in this Atlas spans rapamycin in mice and in common marmosets. He is a co-author on the Interventions Testing Program reports from the San Antonio site and on the marmoset rapamycin studies on blood markers, epigenetic age and the salivary gland
- Alessandro Bitto Showed that a short, three-month course of rapamycin in middle-aged mice can extend lifespan and improve healthspan
- Amanda Erickson Coleman Veterinary cardiologist and first author of the design paper for TRIAD, the lifespan trial of rapamycin in pet dogs
- Brian G. Barnett First author of the six-month, placebo-controlled trial of low-dose rapamycin in healthy pet dogs
- 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
- Elizabeth Fernandez Aging researcher at the Barshop Institute in San Antonio who has worked on rapamycin studies in mice and common marmosets, including the NIA Interventions Testing Program
- James F. Nelson Physiologist of aging at UT Health San Antonio who studies how calorie restriction, sex hormones and drugs change mouse lifespan, and a co-investigator on the Interventions Testing Program
- Martin A. Javors Pharmacologist and professor at UT Health San Antonio who directs an analytical laboratory for biochemical and drug measurements, and a co-author of rapamycin studies in mice and in older people
- Peter S. Rabinovitch Uses mouse models to study how improving mitochondrial function changes lifespan and healthspan, including catalase-overexpressing mice and the drug elamipretide (SS-31)
- R Wilson Powers Molecular biologist who, as a PhD student in Seattle, built high-throughput lifespan screens in yeast and showed that lowering TOR signalling extends chronological lifespan, and who later became a patent attorney
- 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
- Silvan R. Urfer Veterinarian and epidemiologist of aging at the University of Washington who led the first placebo-controlled rapamycin trial in pet dogs, an early step of the Dog Aging Project
- Simon C. Johnson Biologist of aging and mitochondrial disease, first author with Peter Rabinovitch and Matt Kaeberlein of the 2013 Nature review that made the case for mTOR as a central controller of aging, now a professor at Northumbria University
- Vivian Diaz Aging researcher at the Barshop Institute in San Antonio who has worked for more than a decade on the mouse lifespan studies behind rapamycin's reputation as an anti-aging drug, including the Interventions Testing Program
Every researcher with a profile →
On the programme
Meetings in the Atlas calendar where Matt Kaeberlein is listed among the speakers or organisers.
- past Animal Longevity Summit (ALOS) 2026 – Inaugural ↗ 1–2 Oct 2026 ·
Toronto, Canada · ★★
All meetings in the calendar →
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