The Longo laboratory published key findings on a 5 day periodic dietary intervention called Fasting Mimicking Diet, and showed in randomized clinical trials that Fasting Mimicking Diet reduces the risk factors and markers associated with aging and diseases. Dr. Longo’s most recent studies focus on the use of Fasting Mimicking Diet interventions to activate stem cell- based regeneration to promote longevity.

The year 2020 has been particularly crucial for the unraveling on the effects and mechanism of fasting on cancer. Together with his lab, Professor Longo has published in the journal Nature Communications a scientific paper about a combination of a fasting-mimicking diet plus vitamin C, showing that it delays tumor progression and causes disease regression in mice.

Moreover, together with a team of international scientists, he published the first results on a clinical trial on breast cancer patients in the journal Nature. In this publication, researchers found that a one-two punch of a fasting diet with hormone therapy may enhance the effects of breast cancer treatment in small clinical trials and mouse studies.

Professor Longo also contributed to a recent clinical study of 129 breast cancer patients conducted with the University of Leiden. The results, published in Nature Communications, appeared to show increased efficacy of chemotherapy in patients receiving a combination of chemotherapy and a fasting-mimicking diet.

“I like to call it the nontoxic wildcard for cancer treatment,” Professor Longo said. “These clinical studies we have just published — together with the many animal studies published in the past 12 years — suggest that cycles of the fasting-mimicking diet have the potential to make standard therapy more effective against different cancers, each time by changing a different factor or nutrient important for cancer cell survival.”

Currently, Professor Longo is investigating how fasting and diets that mimic fasting’s effects can help immune function, including vaccine efficacy and the body’s response to infection by viruses such as influenza and the novel coronavirus.

Fasting and fasting mimicking diets, as well as the longevity diet, appear to “get rid of damaged or mis­guided cells and replace them with younger and more effective immune cells,” he says, improving many signs of health in mice.

Professor Longo constantly contributes, through his foundations and teaching, to training programs to educate biologists, nutritionists, and medical doctors on the Longevity Diet and fasting with the aim to establish a network of specialized professionals in many countries to oversee patients wishing to use the dietary strategies described in his studies.

His own lab has been working for years with medical doctors, and he hopes that this will become the clinical standard someday. Biologists, physicians, and dietitians working together in teams using their respective problem-solving skills can have an immediate and long-term impact on patients.

Also in 2020, Professor Longo opened its premier specialty clinic in Los Angeles, using research-based projects on longevity, aging, and disease associate with aging to transform those results into clinical studies and therapies, and offering assistance by a team of Medical Doctors, Biologists and Registered Dietitians functioning in an integrative manner to combine traditional medicine with innovative, well-grounded, integrative interventions with focus on nutrition for the prevention and treatment of major chronic illnesses including: Diabetes; Cancer; Autoimmune Diseases; Obesity; Neurodegenerative Diseases; Cardiovascular Disease; Nutritional Guidance for Health and Longevity.

Based in part on research and clinical studies by longevity expert Prof. Longo and his team at the USC’s Longevity Institute, as well as independent research studies by international experts, the Clinic incorporates traditional, integrative as well as molecular and computational approaches personalized for each patient to create a therapeutical Protocol that brings cutting edge science to the bedside.

Prof. Longo has received numerous awards for his work: the 2010 Nathan Shock Lecture Award from the National Institute on Aging (NIA/NIH), the 2013 Vincent Cristofalo “Rising Star” Award in Aging Research from the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), the 2016 Merz Professorship, the 2016 Boehaave Professorship, the 2016 Jubilee Professorship, and the 2016 Glenn Award for research on aging.

Prof. Longo’s core objectives are: to offer treatment and other health services to patients with serious diseases and to those who seek to halt the onset of such diseases; to educate the public—both adults and youth—about how to live a long and healthy life; to sponsor research to develop innovative and creative treatment strategies that are affordable and accessible to all; and to identify ways to prevent specific diseases.

To achieve these goals, Prof. Longo devolves all profits from his books to research and programs, some named above and all made possible by his Foundations, in Los Angeles and in Italy. These books include the best seller “The Longevity Diet”; “Fasting Cancer” (“Il Cancro a Digiuno”); “At Longevity’s Table” (“Alla tavola della Longevità”), and “The Seeds of Longevity are planted in Childhood” (La longevità inizia da bambini).