Northwestern Medicine scientists have newly identified a protein’s key role in cell and physiological aging and have developed – in collaboration with Tohoku University in Japan – an experimental drug that inhibits the protein’s effect and prolonged the lifespan in a mouse model of accelerated aging. The rapidly aging mice who was fed the experimental drug lived more than four times longer than a control group, and their lungs and vascular system were protected from accelerated aging, the new study reports. The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.