Randy Strong
Ran the San Antonio arm of the ITP and its pre-registered protocol — the reason the rapamycin result replicated across three labs
Professor of Pharmacology · Director, Nathan Shock Center of Excellence · Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, UT Health San Antonio
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Randy Strong directs the San Antonio site of the National Institute on Aging's Interventions Testing Program (ITP), a multi-site effort that tests candidate longevity drugs in genetically heterogeneous mice under a strict, pre-registered protocol so that results replicate across independent laboratories.
In 2009, Strong's site co-led the landmark finding, published in Nature, that rapamycin extends mouse lifespan even when treatment starts late in life — the first pharmacological intervention shown to do so in mammals. His group has since tested numerous other compounds through the ITP and, in 2026, is helping lead one of the first large clinical trials of rapamycin in healthy older adults.
The timeline below follows Strong's contributions gathered in this Atlas.
Milestones in the Atlas
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | A | Molecular interplay between mTOR, amyloid-beta, and Tau: effects on cognitive impairments CAC2010 Revealed a vicious cycle: amyloid-beta RAISES mTOR activity, and high mTOR in turn blocks the autophagy needed to clear amyloid and tau - so the disease feeds itself. Rapamycin broke the loop in 3xTg-AD mice, rescuing memory and lowering BOTH amyloid and tau, with autophagy shown to be required for the effect. |
| 2010 | A | Inhibition of mTOR by rapamycin abolishes cognitive deficits and reduces amyloid-beta levels in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease SPI2010 Connected the longevity drug to a specific age-related disease. Long-term rapamycin prevented memory deficits and lowered toxic amyloid-beta in an Alzheimer's mouse model - and the benefit tracked with INCREASED autophagy in neurons. Suggested that the same autophagy boost that may slow aging could also help clear disease-causing proteins. |
| 2012 | A | Evaluation of resveratrol, green tea extract, curcumin, oxaloacetic acid, and medium-chain triglyceride oil on life span of genetically heterogeneous mice STR2012 Evaluates resveratrol, green tea extract, curcumin and other candidate longevity compounds against rapamycin's benchmark effect. |
| 2012 | A | Rapamycin slows aging in mice WIL2012 Confirms rapamycin slows measures of aging in mice, extending earlier ITP lifespan findings. |
| 2014 | A | Rapamycin-mediated lifespan increase in mice is dose and sex dependent and metabolically distinct from dietary restriction MIL2014 Shows rapamycin's lifespan benefit in mice is dose- and sex-dependent and metabolically distinct from dietary restriction. |
| 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. |