Drugs That Boost Our Circadian Rhythms Could Save Our Lives
18th July 2019
Up until the mid-2000s, circadian rhythm science had been mostly viewed as a kind of cute, niche little corner of biology. But advances in gene sequencing technologies post-Human Genome Project led scientists to realize that the clock controlled more than 10,000 genes in nearly every cell in the human body. Even more recently, they discovered that clock was malleable. “Almost all the important functions in your body have a temporal component that we can tweak through the power of circadian manipulation,” says Jake Chen, a biochemist at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. He’s spent the last ten years hunting for compounds with circadian-boosting properties and testing the hypothesis that they can make people live happier, healthier, longer lives. If he’s right, curing or preventing some of society’s most common and costly diseases might come down to chemically resetting our clocks. “The time has come for the biomedical research community to recognize that biological timing is a bonafide therapeutic target.”