Following the discovery of longevity-related genes, researchers have been trying to find drugs to activate them. Betterhumans reports some progress towards a drug that can activate sirtuins, enzymes that influence longevity and are known to be involved in metabolism, aging and cancer development. One of the scientists involved in this work tells us that "if we could activate sirtuins, perhaps we could promote genomic stability and decrease cancer as well as other aging-related problems." Advances in bioinformatics are speeding up this and similar research - notice that it only took a year to go from finding the enzyme to understanding the mechanism and producing a candidate drug!
Link: http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-05-17-3