Does Royal Jelly Extend Our Life Span? I Do Believe It Does...

The Followings are my reasons:

Worker and queen bees are genetically indistinguishable. However, queen bees are fertile, larger and have a longer lifespan (2-5 years) than their female worker counterparts (1-4 months). Differential feeding of larvae with royal jelly controls this caste switching. There is emerging evidence that the queen-bee phenotype is driven by epigenetic mechanisms.

Interestingly, in 2011 Mark Bedford’s group at MD Anderson Cancer Center found that royal jelly—the secretion produced by the hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands of worker bees—has a HDAC inhibitor activity (1). A fatty acid, (E)-10-hydroxy-2-decenoic acid (10HDA), which accounts for up to 5% of royal jelly, harbors the HDAC inhibitor activity. Furthermore, like the most potent HDAC inhibitor "FK228", 10HDA reactivates a RAS-silenced gene called FAS in mammalian fibroblasts, suggesting that the epigenetic regulation of queen-bee development is probably driven in part by royal jelly’s HDAC inhibition.

Back to late 1950s, this fatty acid was reported to have both anti-bacterial and anti-cancer activities, although the detail is no longer available on line, and nobody worked on this fatty acid for the last five decades until recently. During 2007-2009 a Japanese group at Gifu Pharmaceutical University reported that 10HDA inhibits rather weakly the VEGF-induced angiogenesis (the IC50 is around 1 mM), suggesting that this fatty acid might block the growth of solid tumors (2). However, since 10HDA represents only 5% of royal jelly (wet weight), and its IC50 is 1 million times higher than FK228 (IC50 around 1 nM), in reality we might need a huge amount of rather expensive royal jelly to get any effect on tumors.**

** In my opinion, CAPE-based propolis such as “Bio 30” would be 100 times more effective than royal jelly in both anti-cancer and "elixir" activities. Besides propolis is far cheaper than royal jelly (RJ) in general. So I would not recommend either cancer patients or "aging" people to take RJ for these specific purposes.

Nevertheless, can RJ extend the life span of mammals or nematodes such as C. elegans? I believe it does. Why?
For RAS activates PAK1 that inactivates FOXO, which up-regulates FAS. Just like propolis, RJ reactivates FOXO by inhibiting HDAC, a PAK1 activator, leading to the longevity.

Supporting this notion, in 2008 Kerry Kornfeld’s group at Washinton University (St Louis) showed that the valproic acid, a HDAC inhibitor which is used as an anti-epileptic drug, at 6 mM indeed expands the life span of C. elegans by activating FOXO, around 35% (3).

References:

1. Spannhoff , A., Kim, YK., Raynal, N., Gharibyan, V. et al. HDAC inhibitor activity in royal jelly might facilitate caste switching in bees. EMBO Rep. 2011, in press.

2. Izuta, H. et al. 10-Hydroxy-2-decenoic Acid, a Major Fatty Acid from Royal Jelly,
Inhibits VEGF-induced Angiogenesis in Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells.
Evid Based CAM, 2009, 6, 489-94.

3. Evason, K. et al. Valproic acid extends C. elegans lifespan. Aging Cell, 2008, 7, 305-17.