Glaxo Says Wine May Fight Aging

By ANDREW POLLACK
24 april 2008--Like many aging pharmaceutical companies, GlaxoSmithKline has been looking for rejuvenation. Now it thinks it might have literally found the elixir of youth.
Glaxo, a British drug maker, said Tuesday it would acquire an American biotechnology company that is pursuing the notion that a compound found in red wine might retard aging and let people live longer.
Glaxo will pay $720 million in cash, or $22.50 a share, for the company, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. That is an 84 percent premium to Sirtris’s closing price Tuesday of $12.23.
Sirtris, based in Cambridge, Mass., was founded in 2004 after Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School found that a wine ingredient, resveratrol, made yeast live longer. Subsequently Dr. Sinclair, a co-founder of Sirtris, showed that the compound could counter the effects of a high-fat diet in mice and extend their lives.
Christoph Westphal, the chief executive of Sirtris, said Tuesday that drugs that mimic resveratrol, by activating enzymes called sirtuins, could “treat in a safe, natural new way, many of the major killers of western society.”
Because the Food and Drug Administration does not consider aging itself a disease, Sirtris is testing its compounds against illnesses associated with aging.
Two early-stage clinical trials provided preliminary evidence that Sirtris’s formulation of resveratrol could lower blood sugar in people with diabetes. Sirtris hopes to soon begin trials of a synthetic compound that is much more potent than resveratrol.
Glaxo and other drug companies have been paying high prices for biotech companies to bolster their drug pipelines.
Moncef Slaoui, chairman of Glaxo’s research and development arm, said Sirtris had “potentially transformative science.” Sirtris will remain an autonomous unit within Glaxo, with Dr. Westphal in charge.