CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRT), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing small molecule drugs to treat diseases of aging, announced today that activation of SIRT1, a member of the sirtuin family of enzymes, was shown to protect against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in animal models. These findings appear in an article published in Volume 26, Number 13 of The European Molecular Biology Organization Journal (EMBO), Kim et al., 2007 entitled “SIRT1 deacetylase protects against neurodegeneration in models for Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis” which is also available now in the advance online publication.