The prolongation of the lifespan of rats by repeated oral administration of [60] fullerene

In 2012, researchers conducted what has become one of the most widely discussed studies on C60: the Baati Rat Study. In this experiment, rats were given very small, repeated oral doses of C60 dissolved in olive oil and monitored over time. The researchers first confirmed that C60 was absorbed by the body and eliminated naturally. They then examined whether long-term exposure caused any harm and found no evidence of chronic toxicity—an important baseline result. What surprised the scientific community was that the rats receiving C60 lived significantly longer than both the olive-oil group and the water-only control group. The C60 group reached an estimated median lifespan of 42 months, compared to 22 months for controls, meaning the C60-treated rats lived nearly twice as long under this protocol. 

The researchers also explored how C60 behaved in a model of extreme oxidative stress (a chemical challenge unrelated to normal physiology). In this setting, C60-pretreated rats showed less tissue damage and more balanced oxidative-stress markers compared to untreated animals. The authors proposed that the unique structure of C60—particularly its ability to stabilize electrons and interact with free radicals in laboratory settings—may help explain the results. Importantly, these findings apply only to rats under specific experimental conditions, but the study remains influential because it highlighted both the safety of dissolved C60 in this model and the remarkable biological curiosity of how this molecule behaves in oxidative environments.

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