Drugs 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol, found in red wine, will be tested by Sirtris to treat diabetes.

The new drugs target an enzyme called SIRT1, which belongs to a class of proteins known as sirtuins that have been shown to lengthen life span in lower organisms, bringing the benefits of caloric restriction without the strict diet.

“As far as I’m aware, this is the first anti-aging molecule going into [testing in] man,” says David Sinclair, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, and cofounder of Sirtris. (See “The Enthusiast.”) “From that standpoint, this is a major milestone in medicine.”