The new class of drugs, which will be tested on patients next year in Europe or the US mimics the effects of a reduced-calorie diet, which is known to extend the lifespan of a wide range of creatures, from worms to mice and monkeys.

They work in the same way as resveratrol, the chemical in wine and grapes thought to deliver some of the proposed health benefits and explain the "French paradox," referring to how the French suffer relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats.

The problem with red wine is that earlier animal research suggested that around 1000 glasses would have to be consumed each day to take enough resveratrol to reduce the impact of a high fat diet, increase stamina two fold and significantly extend lifespan.

Now new compounds have been developed that are roughly 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol and are also 1,000 times better at staving off the development of type 2 diabetes, report researchers led by Christoph Westphal of the company Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, and David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School, in today's Nature.

"The novel drug candidates we have identified can potentially unlock a whole new approach to treating Type 2 Diabetes," stated Dr Jill Milne, lead author of the study.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body becomes insensitive to the effects of the hormone insulin and it seems that the new drugs can boost insulin sensitivity substantially.

The new drug candidates work by activating a protein called SIRT1, which influences the ageing process and functions to ensure that the body remains receptive to the activity of insulin.

The compounds potentially offer an important new avenue for developing treatments to tackle diseases linked to ageing and poor diet. "The new drug candidates represent a significant milestone because they are the first molecules that have been designed to act on genes that control the ageing process.

" For this reason, we feel they have considerable potential to treat diseases of ageing such as Type 2 Diabetes," said Dr Westphal.

"The breakthrough in potency we have achieved means that we can obtain the health benefits of resveratrol with a considerably lower dose."

"If all goes well, SIRT1 activator drugs could be available on the market as early as 2012 or 2013," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Type 2 Diabetes accounts for 90% of diabetes around the world, and is largely the result of excess body weight and inactivity.

The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 180 million people worldwide have diabetes and this number is likely to more than double by 2030.

Furthermore, WHO projects that deaths due to diabetes will increase by more than 50% in the next 10 years.

There are currently over 2.3 million people with diabetes in the UK, up to 95 per cent of which are type two, and there are up to another 750,000 people with diabetes who have the condition and don't know it.

• British patients suffering from a rare disease are among the first to try another drug developed by Sirtris based on the "magic ingredient" in red wine.

The trial in Newcastle upon Tyne by Prof Patrick Chinnery is using another proprietary version of resveratrol, SRT501, to treat a progressive and fatal genetic disorder called Melas syndrome, where Melas stands for mitochondrial encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke.

Although different from the drug used in the Nature study it also activates the same family of proteins to fight diseases of ageing.

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