Sirtuin 6, the protein making waves in the longevity pool, can now be activated by a brand-new supplement.
SIRT6 is a protein with an important job; it is vital for both normal base excision repair and double-strand break repair of DNA damage, as this damage leads to genomic instability, ultimately contributing to aging. These repairs decline with age, but can be boosted with SIRT6 [1], which is often referred to as the ‘longevity sirtuin’.
Longevity.Technology: SIRT6 is certainly making headlines; from increasing life expectancy in mice by 30% to reducing dangerous inflammation, offering protection from senescence [2] and having neuroprotective qualities [3], this molecule could begin to level the longevity playing field. There is also evidence that the correlated gene, sirtuin 6 (SIRT6), plays a role in bodily processes such as aging, cellular stress resistance and DNA repair [4]. While SIRT6 can be promoted through fasting and calorie restriction, that option isn’t feasible for everyone, so when Alan Graves, CEO of DoNotAge contacted us to let us know about a new SIRT6-activating supplement, we were keen to find out more.
Humans have seven sirtuins, but the one that seems to play the most important role is aging is sirtuin 6. Oxidation can lead to harmful damage to DNA, and SIRT6 recruits PARP1, which acts as a ‘first responder’, detecting the DNA damage and facilitating the choice of repair pathway. This helps to avoid genetic instability and mutations. SIRT6 is also important in the creation of energy, as it plays a role in oxygen consumption and consequent ATP production, and for maintaining telomere integrity.
SIRT6Activator® is a natural product derived from a strain of seaweed is called Fucus Vesiculosus. However, the sea is cruel mistress, and the majority of Fucus Vesiculosus tested by DoNotAge had the opposite effect to the one they wanted and actually inhibited SIRT6.
DoNotAge has overcome this hurdle with extensive testing: samples are gathered from all over the world, and these are tested and examined. Samples that are deemed to activate SIRT6 are then harvested. The testing is carried out by University of Rochester Professor Vera Gorbunova and her team at the Gorbunova Aging Research Center in New York, US.
“There are many researchers looking for chemical activators of sirtuin 6, including my group, but of course these chemical activators have to be very safe,” explains Professor Gorbunova. “There are already some natural compounds that have been identified, a sugar-like molecule that is purified from seaweed, and amazingly, consumption of seaweed is linked to longer lifespan in humans. So countries with the highest consumption of seaweed are Japan and South Korea; people in these countries have the highest life expectancy and they eat a lot of seaweed, so we’ve been screening different preparations of seaweed and fucoidan and we have identified those that are really strong inducers of sirtuin 6 activity.
Fucoidan supplements are widely available, and claim to aid digestion, strengthen the immune system, support chemotherapy by reducing cancer-related inflammation and improve circulation [5]. Fucoidan can be extracted from various brown seaweeds; an Agriculture and Food Development Authority study into seaweed discovered that Fucus distichus, Fucus vesiculous and Cytoseira tamariscofolia all yielded “significantly enhanced SIRT6 activity, and the effect was most pronounced for F. distichus [6].
” Various supplements use a mixture of macroalgae, others stick to one and some products combine fucoidan with vitamins or other ingredients; as with all supplements, customers should examine provenance, purity and efficacy before deciding on a regimen, and luckily there is a wealth of academic evidence on the effects of fucoidan out there for the interested reader.
DoNotAge has chosen to market fucoidan from Fucus Vesiculosus; the limited availability of the active ingredient, and the time-consuming nature of the testing process, means customers are shipped their orders when they are ready – this is not an off-the-shelf supplement. But is it worth the wait? We asked DoNotAge CEO Alan Graves why he thinks DoNotAge’s SIRT6Activator® has disruptive potential.
“It has the already known benefits including improved immune response to vaccines, reduced inflammation and improved survival of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, but importantly it has been specifically tested to potently activate SIRT6 by Professor Gorbunova and her team at Rochester Aging Research Centre,” he told us.
“We’re very proud of the breakthrough and looking forward to our members benefitting from it for many years to come,” says Graves. “After we showed that not all harvests of this ingredient activate Sirtuin 6, we set about finding those that did. Unfortunately, where it is grown and other conditions tend not to have an effect on the Sirtuin activating properties, so this means we just have to get multiple samples from multiple harvests all around the world. If none of them activate SIRT6 then we start again. Many of them even inhibit Sirtuin 6, which is why we had to protect the ingredient … It’s laborious, complex and painful to produce, which means supply is limited. However, it’s all worth it for the end result – genomic stability, reduced inflammation, DNA repair, and ultimately we’d like to see a great increase in health and lifespan.
Due to limited supplies, SIRT6Activator® is not available on DoNotAge’s website; Longevity.Technology readers can, however, access the supplement’s retail page HERE.
Read more about the world of longevity supplements in our market report. To understand more about how supplements work, check out our Tree of LongevityTM.
Read more about the world of longevity supplements in our market report. To understand more about how supplements work, check out our Tree of LongevityTM.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4614943/
[2] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.120.318353
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5389893/
[4] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)30344-7
[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213453019300254
[6] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317755025_The_Identification_of_a_SIRT6_Activator_from_Brown_Algae_Fucus_distichus
[2] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.120.318353
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5389893/
[4] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)30344-7
[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213453019300254
[6] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317755025_The_Identification_of_a_SIRT6_Activator_from_Brown_Algae_Fucus_distichus
