Dr. Adam Konopka, from UW-Madison, "Can rapamycin potentiate the health benefits of exercise in aged subjects?"

[RapAdmin]

Meeting Date / Time:

Thursday, April 11, 2024 12:00 PM-1:00 PM (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada).

1 week until our 2nd seminar series speaker of the semester! Dr. Adam Konopka, from UW-Madison, will speak about “can rapamycin potentiate the health benefits of exercise in aged subjects?”

[RapAdmin]

Login details:

When: Thursday, April 11, 2024
12:00 PM-1:00 PM (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada).
10am Pacific Time
1 pm East Coast Time

Where: Microsoft Teams Meeting

Can Rapamycin Potentiate the Health Benefits of Exercise in Aged Subjects?

Dr. Adam Konopka – University of Wisconsin-Madison

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[RapAdmin]

This is active right now.

[RapAdmin]

The presentation covered the exercise effects of both metformin, and rapamycin, independently. I saw that @Krister_Kauppi was also in attendance listening to the presentation, so between us we hopefully can pull together the key messages of the presentation.
I will post a summary of the presentation tomorrow.

Q&A session after presentation:

Rapamycin and exercise have both shown slowing of telomere loss / attrition.
Lots of exercise benefits even if you are on metformin (so keep exercising if you’re on metformin), but you do lose some of the benefits of exercise while on metformin (Vo2Max improvement, etc.).

[RapAdmin]

Some of the slides from the presentation. These are preliminary results… it sounds like things are being updated on a regular basis as the study progresses (the rapamycin study). I think the Metformin information is all historical (I missed the first 10 minutes of the presentation, so perhaps @Krister_Kauppi can fill us in here.

I think there are a number of important take-home points (though preliminary) from this presentation:

1. Metformin has a significant and negative impact on muscle benefits of exercise, and Vo2Max.
2. But - there are many benefits of exercise that accrue even if you are taking rapamycin, so don’t stop exercising if you are on rapamycin.
3. Pulsed metformin may be best to get the benefits of the greatest benefits from metformin and exercise (assuming you are not diabetic)… this is my own thinking not that of Adam K. Additionally, other blood glucose management medications like acarbose and SGLT2 inhibitors may be better longevity drugs than metformin given these issues related to exercise.

Rapamycin:

1. Pulsed (once weekly) dosing of rapamycin seems to allow the full benefits of exercise during the week
2. Daily dosing of rapamycin (in mice) obviated some of the benefits of exercise
3. Exercise seems to counter the potential negative impacts of rapamycin on insulin sensitivity
4. Preliminary evidence suggests the rapalogs will help preserve muscle health during aging
   Note: In the “PoWeR” part of the study Adam is doing, the running wheel is specially weighted to make it harder for the mice to run on the exercise wheel, thus greater levels of exercise are achieved in this arm of the study. And, note: the dosing variables are PoWeR (no rapamycin), PoWer plus rapamycin 5 days per week, and PoWeR plus Rapamycin dosed 1 day per week.

Presentation

Note: You can click on any image to make it full screen, and then you can also left/right arrow through the presentation while full screen.

[Krister_Kauppi]

Great summary and great that you got the slides!

If someone has any questions for Adam Konopka just let me know and I will try to get them in to the podcast interview I will have with him in the future when the results from his different rapamycin trials are published.