A study published in Communications Biology by Juhi Kumar, Kristal Ng and Charalampos Rallis reports that both pharmaceuticals and naturally occurring metabolites can influence lifespan through the Target of Rapamycin (TOR) pathway.

TOR Pathway’s Central Role in Growth and Aging

The TOR pathway is an evolutionarily conserved signalling system found in organisms ranging from yeast to humans. It plays a vital part in regulating growth and aging and is closely linked to major age-related conditions, including cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Because of its broad influence, TOR has become a major target in anti-aging and cancer research, with drugs such as rapamycin already showing an ability to extend healthy lifespan in several animal models.

Rapalink-1, the compound examined in the investigation, is a next-generation TOR inhibitor currently being studied for potential use in cancer therapy. The research team found that rapalink-1 slowed certain aspects of yeast cell growth while also extending their lifespan. The effect appears to operate through TORC1 — the growth-promoting component of the TOR pathway.

Discovery of a Metabolic Feedback Loop Involving Agmatinases

The study unexpectedly identified a significant role for a group of enzymes known as agmatinases, which convert the metabolite agmatine into polyamines. These enzymes appear to participate in a previously unrecognized “metabolic feedback loop” that helps maintain balanced TOR activity. When agmatinase activity was disrupted, yeast cells grew more quickly but showed signs of premature aging, revealing a trade-off between rapid growth and long-term cell survival.

The team also found that adding agmatine or putrescine (a related compound) supported longevity in yeast and improved growth under specific conditions.

“By showing that agmatinases are essential for healthy aging, we’ve uncovered a new layer of metabolic control over TOR — one that may be conserved in humans,” said Dr. Rallis. “Because agmatine is produced by diet and gut microbes, this work may help explain how nutrition and the microbiome influence aging.”

Caution Around Agmatine Supplementation

Rallis noted that agmatine supplements are available commercially but emphasized caution: “We should be cautious about consuming agmatine for growth or longevity purposes. Our data indicate the agmatine supplementation can be beneficial for growth only when certain metabolic pathways related to arginine breakdown are intact. In addition, agmatine does not always promote beneficial effects as it can contribute to certain pathologies.”

These findings highlight important connections between TOR signalling, metabolism and longevity. The results may help guide future strategies that pair TOR-targeting drugs with dietary or microbiome-based approaches in the study of healthy aging, cancer biology and metabolic disease.

A team from King’s College London reported that individuals who followed dietary patterns high in polyphenols had lower predicted cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.

Polyphenols are naturally occurring plant compounds associated with a wide range of health benefits, including support for the heart, brain, and gut.

Long-Term Findings From a Large UK Cohort

The study, published recently in BMC Medicine, tracked more than 3,100 adults from the TwinsUK cohort for more than ten years. It found that diets rich in certain groups of polyphenols were linked to healthier blood pressure and cholesterol levels, which contributed to lower CVD risk scores.

For the first time, the researchers also assessed a large set of urine metabolites that appear when the body processes polyphenols.

These biomarkers showed that people with higher levels of polyphenol metabolites (especially those linked to flavonoids and phenolic acids) had lower cardiovascular risk scores. They also tended to have higher HDL cholesterol, also known as ‘good’ cholesterol.

A New Scoring Tool to Measure Polyphenol Intake

To better understand dietary patterns, the researchers used a newly designed polyphenol dietary score (PPS). This score reflects intake of 20 common polyphenol-rich foods in the UK, including tea, coffee, berries, olive oil, nuts, and whole grains.

The PPS demonstrated stronger links to cardiovascular health than estimates of total polyphenol intake. The team suggested that this may be because the PPS captures overall eating habits rather than focusing on single compounds. This supports the idea that looking at the full diet provides a clearer picture of how polyphenol-rich foods collectively contribute to long-term heart health.

Expert Perspectives on Heart Benefits

Professor Ana Rodriguez-Mateos, senior author and Professor of Human Nutrition at King’s College London, said: “Our findings show that long-term adherence to polyphenol-rich diets can substantially slow the rise in cardiovascular risk as people age. Even small, sustained shifts towards foods like berries, tea, coffee, nuts, and whole grains may help protect the heart over time.”

Dr. Yong Li, first author of the study, added: “This research provides strong evidence that regularly including polyphenol-rich foods in your diet is a simple and effective way to support heart health. These plant compounds are widely available in everyday foods, making this a practical strategy for most people.”

Connection Between Aging and Cardiovascular Risk

The researchers noted that although cardiovascular risk naturally increases with age, participants with higher polyphenol intake experienced a slower rise in risk across the 11-year follow-up period. They also highlighted the importance of future dietary intervention trials to confirm and expand on these findings.

Architects place high priority on surfaces that can bear their own load. Some visually appealing examples are known as shells, and these have traditionally been made from reinforced concrete. Modern architects, however, are interested in limiting concrete due to its cost, waste, and lack of visual transparency. This has led to growing interest in gridshells, which use intersecting curved elements of metal, glass or timber to span wide areas without interior supports.

Why Gridshells Are Gaining Interest

Gridshells are well suited for covering expansive public spaces without columns. They are found at sites such as train station entrances, restored historic courtyards, and public squares. Notable examples include the British Museum’s Great Court, the glass roof at the Dutch Maritime Museum, and New York’s Moynihan Train Hall. Although these structures showcase what gridshells can achieve, designers have lacked standard computational tools that can efficiently manage the wide range of shapes they might want to build.

Masaaki Miki of the University of Tokyo and Toby Mitchell from the engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti collaborated to address this gap. Their new algorithm identifies ideal gridshell shapes that support complex geometries while still maintaining structural reliability.

Solving Long-Standing Challenges in Gridshell Design

Even though gridshell projects exist, the many geometric, mechanical, fabrication and construction requirements have made them difficult for most clients to pursue. Miki and Mitchell had already introduced a NURBS-based system capable of addressing many of these issues within one computational framework. However, two major limitations remained: their earlier method struggled with highly irregular shapes, and the computing time required was not practical. The updated method removes these obstacles, creating a more efficient workflow and making advanced gridshell form-finding feasible for a larger group of architects and designers.

“The project began in 2020 with an interest in shell structures, often made of concrete. Traditional designs aim for shapes that carry their own weight entirely through the force of compression, but this limits how expressive or sculptural they can be,” said Miki. “We set out to find new ways to design shells that consider forces of compression as well as tension, allowing greater design freedom. We adapted our approach to more modern metal-and-glass gridshells, developing methods to balance mechanical reliability, aesthetics and ease of construction. Recent advances in computational speed have made it possible to solve such complex conditions using rigorous methods.”

Using NURBS to Improve Precision and Speed

A major strength of the new method is that it works directly with NURBS surfaces. Unlike mesh-based approaches that use thousands of triangular pieces, NURBS provide smooth, continuous and mathematically accurate representations of curved surfaces. Because NURBS are already widely used in architectural design, integrating this method into existing workflows is straightforward. The research team created a plug-in for Rhinoceros, a popular NURBS-focused CAD program, allowing architects to use the approach within familiar software.

The method represents stress distribution on a NURBS surface and uses newly developed algorithms that increase processing speed by 98%. This improvement removes the need for high-end GPUs and provides a more accessible way to generate shapes that meet both geometric and structural requirements. The resulting gridshells remain stable under gravity and support metal-and-glass construction that is practical to assemble.

“Because we are addressing a real-world problem, we have been rigorously validating our solutions by several test methods we also developed,” said Miki. “When the tests revealed failures in the method, it was stressful. However, we are now totally happy because all solutions pass the tests.”

Future Directions

While the current research focuses on metal-and-glass gridshells, the team plans to expand the technique to include composite timber gridshells in the future.

This research was partially supported by the Nomura Foundation, the JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI; grant number 23K17784), and JST ASPIRE (grant number JPMJAP2401).