Volume 54 Issue 1, January 2025

A new study reveals that metformin, a widely prescribed diabetes medication, can significantly improve health parameters in aged male cynomolgus monkeys — possibly by slowing the aging process. The findings represent an important step toward understanding how pharmaceutical interventions might, in the future, extend the healthspan and delay age-related diseases in humans.

Mouse genetic studies are essential for our understanding of genotype–phenotype relationships. Here the authors discuss the technological advances that have accelerated the pace of mouse genetic discovery during the twenty-first century.

In this Review, the authors examine current guidelines for metabolic tolerance tests in mice and provide a set of revisited recommendations to improve the reproducibility and clinical translation of the findings.

Differences in standard chow diets can influence mouse model phenotypes and impact experimental reproducibility. Here Knuth et al. show that the timing during which mice are exposed to standard chow can also affect phenotypic outcomes.