A drug designed using artificial intelligence has shown early signs of reducing patients' biological age, according to new findings published by Hong Kong-based biotech firm Insilico Medicine in the journal Nature Biotechnology on Monday, cited by The New York Times.
The findings offered a fresh proof-of-concept for AI-driven drug discovery, said the report.
The drug, rentosertib, was originally developed to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a progressive scarring disease of the lungs, and was tested on 42 patients over 12 weeks in a Phase 2a trial.
Insilico later revisited blood samples from that trial using AI-based "aging clocks", models trained to estimate a person's biological age and health risk from proteins in the blood, and found that patients on the drug showed reductions in predicted biological age compared with those on a placebo.
Both the drug's molecular structure and its target, a protein called TNIK, were generated using AI methods that combined disease data with aging biology, marking what researchers described as one of the clearest signals yet that a computationally designed drug can measurably shift biological age markers in humans.
Across six independent proteomic aging clocks, patients showed reductions ranging from roughly 2.6 to 6.2 predicted years, with the strongest effect recorded around the fourth week of treatment, according to the report.
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However, scientists cautioned against reading too much into the results. The anti-aging signal emerged from a reanalysis of a trial designed for a specific lung disease, not from a dedicated longevity study, and was recorded in a small, ill patient population rather than healthy individuals.
Aging clocks themselves also remain a debated tool in the field, with researchers still divided over how reliably they capture true biological ageing or predict long-term health outcomes.
Despite the cautious tone, some researchers view the findings as an important marker for the broader use of generative AI in medicine, extending beyond drug discovery for specific diseases into longevity research more broadly.
Rentosertib will still need to go through further clinical trials and regulatory review before any approval, including studies that test its effects specifically in healthy people, the report noted.
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