Rapamycin, anti-aging, and avoiding the fate of Tithonus

The discovery that rapamycin increased the lifespan of mice was recognized by Science as one of the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2009. In addition to increasing lifespan, Neff and colleagues show that while rapamycin improves several functions/pathologies that change with age, it has little effect on the majority of the physiological and structural parameters they evaluated. What do these data tell us about the ability of rapamycin to delay aging and improve quality of life, i.e., prevent the fate of Tithonu.