Every article, A to Z

Articles

• AAV vectorsGeneticsEngineered adeno-associated viruses used to carry therapeutic genes into human cells, the workhorse of in vivo gene therapy and the source of most of its limits.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Accelerating changeFoundationsThe claim that technological capability grows exponentially or faster, so that the rate of change itself increases over historical time.presentContested
• Access and inequalitySocietyThe problem of who can obtain expensive biomedical interventions, and whether biotechnology will convert economic inequality into biological inequality.presentEstablished
• Aging biomarkersLongevityMeasurable indicators intended to track the rate or extent of biological aging, sought as surrogate endpoints so that anti-aging trials can read out in years rather than decades.late 2020sEmerging
• AI drug discoveryFoundationsThe use of machine learning to select drug targets, generate candidate molecules and predict failure, so far demonstrably faster at making compounds than at making medicines.TRL 5late 2020sEmerging
• AI protein designGeneticsMachine-learning systems that predict what shape a protein sequence folds into and that generate new proteins with no natural counterpart.TRL 5presentEmerging
• Alcor Life Extension FoundationOrganizationsA United States cryonics organization, founded in 1972, that preserves legally dead members at cryogenic temperatures under a trust structure meant to fund storage indefinitely.indefiniteEstablished
• Altos LabsOrganizationsA biotechnology company launched in 2022 with about three billion dollars in committed funding to develop cellular rejuvenation programming as a medicine.2030sEmerging
• Alzheimer's diseaseLongevityThe neurodegenerative disease responsible for most dementia, driven above all by age, and the disease that decides whether added years of life come with a working mind.presentEstablished
• Anders SandbergPeopleSwedish computational neuroscientist and futures researcher who co-wrote the whole brain emulation roadmap and works on the physical limits of long-term civilization.presentEstablished
• Artificial bloodBodiesEngineered substitutes for the oxygen-carrying function of blood, including haemoglobin carriers, perfluorocarbon emulsions and cultured red cells, none in general clinical use.TRL 52030sExperimental
• Artificial general intelligenceFoundationsA hypothetical artificial system matching or exceeding competent human performance across essentially all cognitive tasks rather than in narrow domains.indefiniteContested
• Artificial heartBodiesMechanical devices that take over some or all of the heart's pumping function, from routine ventricular assist pumps to total replacements used mainly as a bridge to transplant.TRL 8presentEstablished
• Artificial wombReproductionA device that sustains fetal development outside a body by perfusing the umbilical circulation while the fetus remains immersed in fluid, tested so far only in animals.TRL 52030sExperimental
• Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNAGeneticsThe 1975 meeting at which molecular biologists lifted their own moratorium on recombinant DNA work by agreeing a system of physical and biological containment.historicalHistorical
• Aubrey de GreyPeopleBritish biogerontologist who proposed the SENS damage-repair framework for rejuvenation and popularized the idea of longevity escape velocity.presentContested
• AutophagyLongevityThe lysosomal pathway by which cells digest their own damaged components, and the process through which most known lifespan-extending interventions appear to act.presentEstablished
• Base editingGeneticsA genome editing method that chemically converts one DNA base into another at a targeted site without cutting both strands of the double helix.TRL 7late 2020sEmerging
• BioconservatismSocietyThe position that biotechnological modification of human beings should face a strong presumption against it, grounded in dignity, precaution, or the value of the given.presentEstablished
• Bioethics of enhancementSocietyThe philosophical and policy debate over whether biomedical means may legitimately be used to push human capacities beyond species-typical function.presentEstablished
• Biohacking and grindersEnhancementThe practice of modifying one's own biology outside institutional medicine, ranging from subdermal implants to do-it-yourself gene transfer and open-source medical devices.presentContested
• Biological ageLongevityAn estimate of how far an individual has progressed along the trajectory of age-related decline, expressed in years and compared against their chronological age.presentContested
• Blue ZonesLongevityFive regions claimed to have unusually high concentrations of centenarians, and the lifestyle explanations built on that claim.presentContested
• Brain preservationMindsPreserving the structural information in a brain well enough that a future technology could reconstruct its memories, rather than revive the tissue itself.TRL 4indefiniteExperimental
• Brain-to-brain interfacesCyberneticsSystems that link one nervous system to another by decoding activity from a sender and delivering stimulation to a receiver, so far at rates of a few bits per minute.TRL 32050s+Experimental
• Brain–computer interfaceCyberneticsA system that measures nervous-system activity, decodes an intention or state from it, and converts that decoded signal into a command for an external device.TRL 6late 2020sEmerging
• Buck Institute for Research on AgingOrganizationsAn independent research institute in Novato, California, opened in 1999 as the first in the world dedicated solely to the biology of aging.presentEstablished
• Calico Life SciencesOrganizationsAlphabet's independent biotechnology company, founded in 2013 to study the biology of aging and develop interventions against age-related disease.2030sEstablished
• Caloric restrictionLongevitySustained reduction of energy intake without malnutrition, the oldest and most reproducible lifespan-extending intervention in animals and the least proven in humans.TRL 6presentExperimental
• CancerLongevityThe class of diseases in which a somatic cell lineage escapes the controls on its own division, and the age-related cause of death that constrains most life-extension arguments.presentEstablished
• CasgevyGeneticsThe first approved CRISPR-based medicine, which disrupts a fetal-haemoglobin repressor in a patient's own blood stem cells to treat sickle cell disease and beta thalassaemia.TRL 9presentEmerging
• Cellular senescenceLongevityA stable arrest of cell division, triggered by telomere attrition or stress, in which the arrested cell stays metabolically active and secretes inflammatory factors.presentEstablished
• Closed-loop life supportSpaceEngineering that regenerates a crew's air, water, and food from their own waste, reducing the resupply mass that otherwise makes long-duration spaceflight impossible.TRL 52030sEmerging
• Cochlear implantCyberneticsAn implanted device that restores a functional sense of hearing by stimulating the auditory nerve with electrical pulses, bypassing the ear's damaged hair cells.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Colossal BiosciencesOrganizationsA Texas biotechnology company founded in 2021 to recreate extinct species by editing the genomes of living relatives, and to spin out conservation technology from that work.late 2020sContested
• Compression of morbidityLongevityThe hypothesis that chronic illness can be postponed into a shorter interval before death, so that added years of life are healthy ones.presentContested
• ConnectomicsMindsThe mapping of complete wiring diagrams of nervous systems, from macroscale fibre tracts down to every synapse in a volume of tissue.TRL 52030sEmerging
• Consumer blood testingLongevityThe sale of clinical laboratory panels directly to asymptomatic consumers as preventive medicine, where accurate assays meet a screening logic that guidelines reject.TRL 9presentContested
• Continuous glucose monitoringLongevityA wearable sensor that reports glucose in the fluid between cells every few minutes, well established in diabetes and of unproven value to people without it.TRL 9presentEstablished
• CRISPR–Cas9GeneticsA bacterial defence system repurposed as a programmable DNA-cutting tool, in which a short guide RNA directs the Cas9 enzyme to a chosen sequence in almost any genome.TRL 9presentEstablished
• CryonicsLongevityThe practice of preserving legally dead people at cryogenic temperatures in the hope that future medicine can repair and revive them.TRL 2indefiniteContested
• Cynthia KenyonPeopleAmerican molecular geneticist whose 1993 finding that a single daf-2 mutation doubles the lifespan of C. elegans made aging a tractable genetic problem.presentEstablished
• David SinclairPeopleAustralian-American biologist at Harvard known for sirtuin and NAD+ research, the information theory of aging, and disputes over the strength of his public claims.presentContested
• De-extinctionGeneticsThe attempt to recreate extinct organisms, in practice by editing a close living relative to carry some of the extinct animal's traits rather than restoring the species itself.TRL 42030sContested
• Decellularized scaffoldsBodiesDonor tissues stripped of their cells to leave an extracellular matrix scaffold, used as surgical implants and as a route to rebuilding whole organs from a preserved vascular tree.TRL 62030sEmerging
• Deep brain stimulationCyberneticsA surgical therapy in which implanted electrodes deliver continuous electrical pulses to specific deep brain structures to suppress the symptoms of movement and psychiatric disorders.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Designer babiesReproductionA popular term for children whose traits are chosen before birth, covering a real but narrow practice of embryo selection and a largely hypothetical practice of embryo editing.presentContested
• Dietary supplementsLongevityVitamins, minerals, botanicals, and other compounds sold without pre-market approval, whose large randomized trials have repeatedly failed to show benefit in well-nourished adults.TRL 9presentContested
• Differential technological developmentSocietyNick Bostrom's proposal to influence the order in which technologies arrive, hastening protective ones and delaying dangerous ones, rather than trying to halt progress.presentContested
• Digital immortalityMindsThe persistence of a person in digital form after death, ranging from chatbot reconstructions built from their data to the hypothetical emulation of their brain.presentEmerging
• Disability rights and enhancementSocietyThe disability-rights critique of selection and enhancement, centred on the expressivist objection, the social model, and the difference between curing and accommodating.presentEstablished
• DNA nanotechnologyNanomedicineThe use of DNA as a construction material rather than a carrier of genes, folding programmed sequences into nanoscale shapes, devices, and logic-gated containers.TRL 42030sExperimental
• Dog Aging ProjectOrganizationsA longitudinal study of aging in tens of thousands of companion dogs, paired with TRIAD, a randomized placebo-controlled trial testing whether rapamycin extends canine lifespan.presentEstablished
• Dual-use research of concernSocietyLife-science research that produces knowledge or tools with legitimate purposes but foreseeable potential for catastrophic misuse, and the oversight regimes built around it.presentEstablished
• EctogenesisReproductionThe development of a mammalian embryo or fetus outside a body, either for part of gestation or for all of it, and the ethical arguments the prospect generates.2040sSpeculative
• Effective accelerationismPeopleAn online techno-optimist movement holding that technological acceleration is a moral imperative and that precautionary restraint on AI causes more harm than it prevents.presentContested
• Electrocorticography interfacesCyberneticsBrain–computer interfaces that record from electrode arrays resting on the cortical surface rather than penetrating it, trading single-neuron resolution for stability and coverage.TRL 6late 2020sEmerging
• Embryo selectionReproductionTesting embryos created by IVF and choosing which to transfer, a routine clinical practice for single-gene disease whose extension to complex traits remains disputed.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Emmanuelle CharpentierPeopleFrench microbiologist who identified the second RNA that CRISPR-Cas9 requires, co-authored the 2012 paper that made the system programmable, and shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.presentEstablished
• Engineered pandemicsSocietyOutbreaks caused by a pathogen deliberately modified, synthesised, or released rather than one that emerged from nature, and the biosecurity programme built around preventing them.presentSpeculative
• Engineered sleep reductionEnhancementThe proposal to shorten the amount of sleep a person needs without incurring the costs of sleep deprivation, based on rare short-sleep gene variants and wake-promoting drugs.2040sSpeculative
• Enhancement arms raceSocietyThe argument that competitive pressure makes enhancement effectively compulsory, so that individually rational adoption leaves everyone worse off.2030sContested
• Enhancement in sportEnhancementThe regulation of performance enhancement in competition, the only domain that draws an operational line between therapy and enhancement and litigates it case by case.presentEstablished
• Epigenetic clocksLongevityStatistical predictors that estimate age or mortality risk from DNA methylation patterns at selected sites in the genome.TRL 6presentEstablished
• Epigenetic reprogrammingLongevityThe use of pluripotency factors to reset age-associated marks on DNA and chromatin, restoring youthful gene expression in cells without converting them into stem cells.TRL 32030sExperimental
• Epigenome editingGeneticsTargeted modification of the chemical marks that control gene expression, switching a gene off or on without altering the underlying DNA sequence.TRL 62030sExperimental
• Eric DrexlerPeopleAmerican engineer who proposed molecular nanotechnology, wrote Engines of Creation and Nanosystems, and later worked on AI strategy at Oxford.presentContested
• Exercise as a geroprotectorLongevityStructured physical activity, the intervention with the strongest evidence for extending healthy life in humans and the benchmark any geroprotective drug must beat.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Existential riskSocietyThe category of risks that would end humanity or permanently destroy its potential, and the research programme built around identifying and reducing them.indefiniteContested
• ExtropianismPeopleThe first organized transhumanist movement, built around a set of optimistic principles for self-directed human transformation and dissolved as an institution in 2006.historicalHistorical
• FM-2030PeopleIranian-American futurist, born Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, who defined the transhuman as a transitional being and was cryopreserved on his death in 2000.historicalHistorical
• Future of humanityFoundationsThe study of humanity's possible long-run trajectories, conventionally grouped into extinction, recurrent collapse, plateau, and posthuman transformation.indefiniteSpeculative
• Gene dopingEnhancementThe non-therapeutic use of gene transfer or gene regulation to improve athletic performance, prohibited in sport since the early 2000s with no publicly confirmed case.late 2020sExperimental
• Gene drivesGeneticsGenetic elements engineered to bias their own inheritance above the Mendelian half, allowing an introduced trait to spread through a wild population.TRL 52030sExperimental
• Gene therapy for agingLongevityThe use of delivered genes to modify aging biology systemically, demonstrated in mice with telomerase and other constructs and untested in any controlled human trial.TRL 32040sExperimental
• Generation ship biologySpaceThe biological requirements of a crewed voyage lasting generations: population genetics, reproduction and development off Earth, and consent for people born in transit.indefiniteSpeculative
• Genetic code expansion and recodingGeneticsAltering how a cell reads DNA so that reassigned codons encode amino acids not found in nature, producing organisms with chemistry and immunity no natural cell has.TRL 42040sExperimental
• Genetic discriminationSocietyDifferential treatment of people on the basis of genetic information, and the uneven legal regime that restricts it in employment and health cover but rarely elsewhere.presentEstablished
• Genetic enhancement of cognitionEnhancementThe proposal to raise human cognitive ability by selecting or editing genetic variants, constrained by the extreme polygenicity of the trait and by pleiotropy.2040sSpeculative
• George ChurchPeopleAmerican geneticist who helped invent direct genomic sequencing, founded the Personal Genome Project, and co-founded dozens of biotechnology companies.presentEstablished
• Geroscience hypothesisLongevityThe proposition that aging is the shared upstream driver of most chronic disease, so that slowing it would delay many conditions at once rather than one at a time.2030sEmerging
• GLP-1 receptor agonistsLongevityDrugs that mimic the gut hormone GLP-1 to lower blood glucose and food intake, producing large weight loss that persists only while treatment continues.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Governance of human genome editingSocietyThe patchwork of national law, professional norms, funding rules, and international soft law that determines what may be done to a human genome and by whom.presentEmerging
• Grey gooNanomedicineThe scenario in which self-replicating nanomachines consume the biosphere, an idea introduced by Eric Drexler in 1986 and later disowned by him.indefiniteSpeculative
• Gut microbiomeLongevityThe community of bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses living in the human intestine, and a much-claimed but weakly demonstrated lever on aging.presentEmerging
• Hallmarks of agingLongevityThe consensus taxonomy of cellular and molecular processes held to drive mammalian aging, set out as nine mechanisms in 2013 and expanded to twelve in 2023.presentEstablished
• He Jiankui affairGeneticsThe 2018 announcement that twin girls had been born from CRISPR-edited embryos in Shenzhen, and the scientific condemnation and criminal prosecution that followed.historicalHistorical
• Head transplantationBodiesThe proposed transfer of a living human head onto a donor body, blocked chiefly by the inability to reconnect a severed spinal cord and rejected by mainstream neurosurgery.indefiniteContested
• HealthspanLongevityThe portion of life spent in good health and function, as distinct from total lifespan; widely used as a goal but not standardized as a measure.presentEstablished
• Heat and cold exposureLongevityDeliberate exposure to heat or cold, from sauna bathing to cold-water immersion, as a health practice built on a hormetic mechanism whose effect on human lifespan is unmeasured.TRL 5presentContested
• Human cloningReproductionProducing a human genetically identical to an existing person by somatic cell nuclear transfer, demonstrated to the blastocyst stage and never taken to a pregnancy.TRL 4indefiniteContested
• Human digital twinsBodiesComputational models of an individual person's physiology, built from that person's own data and run to predict what an intervention would do before it is attempted.TRL 42040sExperimental
• Human enhancementEnhancementThe deliberate use of biomedical or technical means to extend human capacities beyond what is needed to restore or maintain ordinary health.presentContested
• Human germline editingGeneticsModification of human embryos, eggs, or sperm so that the genetic change is inherited by the resulting child and by all of their descendants.TRL 42040sContested
• Human hibernation and torporSpaceThe proposal to induce a hibernation-like state of suppressed metabolism in people, and the distance between rodent torpor circuits and any clinical human application.2040sExperimental
• Human–AI mergerFoundationsThe proposal that humans and artificial intelligence will form a single cognitive system rather than remaining separate agents that merely use one another.2040sSpeculative
• Humanity+OrganizationsThe main international transhumanist membership organization, founded in 1998 as the World Transhumanist Association and now a small education and advocacy body.presentEstablished
• ImmunosenescenceLongevityThe age-related remodelling of the immune system, in which responses to unfamiliar antigens weaken while chronic activation against familiar ones persists.presentEstablished
• In vitro fertilisationReproductionThe routine clinical procedure in which eggs are fertilised outside the body and an embryo is transferred to a uterus, and the platform every other embryo technology is built on.TRL 9presentEstablished
• In vitro gametogenesisReproductionMaking functional eggs or sperm from pluripotent stem cells in culture, achieved end to end in mice and still short of the meiotic stages in humans.TRL 32030sExperimental
• Induced pluripotent stem cellsBodiesAdult cells reprogrammed back to an embryonic-like state, capable of becoming any cell type in the body and of being derived from a specific patient.TRL 7late 2020sEmerging
• InflammagingLongevityThe chronic, low-grade, sterile inflammation that develops with age in the absence of infection, and its disputed role in frailty and age-related disease.presentEstablished
• Intelligence amplificationEnhancementThe project of raising human problem-solving capacity by improving the tools, notations and organisations that thinking runs on rather than by altering the brain.presentEstablished
• Interventions Testing ProgramOrganizationsA National Institute on Aging programme that tests whether candidate anti-aging compounds extend lifespan in genetically heterogeneous mice, run in parallel at three sites.presentEstablished
• Jennifer DoudnaPeopleAmerican biochemist who co-authored the 2012 paper showing CRISPR-Cas9 could be programmed to cut chosen DNA sequences, and shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.presentEstablished
• Julian SavulescuPeopleAustralian bioethicist who formulated procreative beneficence and, with Ingmar Persson, the argument for moral bioenhancement; the leading academic advocate of human enhancement.presentEstablished
• KlothoLongevityA gene and hormone whose loss shortens mouse lifespan and whose best-demonstrated job is phosphate control, proposed as a longevity factor on largely non-human evidence.2030sExperimental
• Lab-grown organsBodiesThe attempt to produce whole transplantable organs from cells rather than donors, currently limited to simple tissues, islet clusters and organs grown inside host animals.TRL 42040sExperimental
• Leon KassPeopleAmerican physician and bioethicist who chaired the President's Council on Bioethics and made the strongest philosophical case that mortality gives human life its meaning.presentEstablished
• Leonard HayflickPeopleAmerican microbiologist who showed in 1961 that normal human cells divide a finite number of times in culture, and who argued for fifty years afterwards that aging is not a disease.historicalHistorical
• Limb regenerationBodiesThe regrowth of an amputated limb from the stump, routine in salamanders and absent in mammals, and the biology that separates the two.2050s+Experimental
• Lipid nanoparticlesGeneticsFour-component lipid vesicles that carry mRNA and other nucleic acids into cells, the delivery system behind mRNA vaccines and the first systemic in vivo CRISPR therapies.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Longevity escape velocityLongevityThe hypothetical threshold at which medicine adds remaining life expectancy faster than time subtracts it, making death by aging recede indefinitely.2050s+Speculative
• LoyalOrganizationsA biotechnology company developing drugs to extend healthy lifespan in dogs, working through the veterinary regulator that will consider lifespan itself as an indication.late 2020sEmerging
• Machine consciousnessMindsThe question of whether an artificial system can have subjective experience, how anyone could tell, and what would follow morally if one did.indefiniteSpeculative
• Max MorePeopleBritish-American philosopher who founded extropianism, wrote the principles that gave transhumanism its first organized programme, and led Alcor from 2011 to 2020.presentEstablished
• Maximum human lifespanLongevityThe longest duration a human being has lived or could live, distinct from average life expectancy and disputed as to whether any fixed ceiling exists.indefiniteContested
• Medical microrobotsNanomedicineMicrometre- to millimetre-scale devices steered through the body by external magnetic, acoustic, or biological means, demonstrated in animals and used clinically only as capsule endoscopes.TRL 42030sExperimental
• Medical nanorobotsNanomedicineProposed micron-scale machines that would circulate in the body and perform mechanical repair, a design tradition with no working device and several unsolved physical constraints.TRL 22050s+Speculative
• Memory prosthesisCyberneticsAn implanted device intended to restore or improve memory formation by supplying the pattern of neural activity a damaged or underperforming hippocampus fails to generate.TRL 32040sExperimental
• Mental privacySocietyThe question of what can be inferred about a person's mental states from neural and physiological recordings, and what protection that information should receive.late 2020sEmerging
• Metformin and the TAME trialLongevityA generic diabetes drug proposed as a geroprotector, and the large randomized trial designed to make aging itself an acceptable regulatory indication.TRL 42030sContested
• Methuselah FoundationOrganizationsA Virginia nonprofit founded in the early 2000s that used prize competitions to seed research on life extension, regenerative medicine and organ engineering.presentEstablished
• Microgravity adaptationSpaceThe set of physiological and neural changes by which the human body reorganises itself for weightlessness, and the countermeasures that limit the cost of returning.presentEstablished
• Mind uploadingMindsThe hypothetical transfer of a person's mind to a computational substrate, such that the resulting process is that person rather than a description of them.2050s+Speculative
• Mirror lifeGeneticsHypothetical organisms built from mirror-image biological molecules, which a large group of scientists argued in 2024 could evade immunity and predation and should not be created.2050s+Speculative
• Mitochondrial dysfunction in agingLongevityAge-related decline in mitochondrial energy production, quality control and signalling, once explained by free-radical damage and now understood as a more tangled process.presentEstablished
• Mitochondrial replacement therapyReproductionA set of IVF techniques that place a mother's nuclear DNA in a donor egg to prevent transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease, licensed in a few countries and used rarely.TRL 8presentEmerging
• Molecular assemblerNanomedicineA proposed machine that would build objects by positioning individual atoms, central to Drexler's nanotechnology programme and disputed by chemists since the 1990s.indefiniteContested
• Moral enhancementEnhancementThe proposal to improve human moral motivation by biomedical means, argued for as a response to technologies that outpace evolved moral psychology.indefiniteSpeculative
• Morphological freedomSocietyThe claimed right to modify one's own body and mind as one chooses, and the correlative right to refuse modification imposed by others.presentContested
• Myoelectric prostheticsBodiesExternally powered artificial limbs controlled by electrical activity recorded from the wearer's residual muscles, the dominant design for powered upper-limb prostheses.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Myostatin inhibitionEnhancementBlockade of the growth factor myostatin to increase skeletal muscle mass, an effect reproduced across species that has repeatedly failed to translate into functional benefit in humans.TRL 7late 2020sExperimental
• NAD+ precursorsLongevitySupplements such as nicotinamide riboside and NMN that raise cellular NAD+ levels, with strong pharmacokinetic evidence and weak evidence of any functional benefit.TRL 4presentContested
• Naked mole-ratLongevityA small eusocial African rodent whose flat mortality curve, tumour resistance and anoxia tolerance make it comparative biogerontology's central model organism.presentEstablished
• Nanoscale diagnosticsNanomedicineDetection methods that read single molecules or use nanoscale labels, including liquid biopsy, multi-cancer blood tests, and nanopore sensing, together with their overdiagnosis costs.TRL 8presentEmerging
• Natasha Vita-MorePeopleAmerican designer and theorist who wrote the Transhumanist Arts Statement, designed the Primo Posthuman body concept, and led Humanity+ for much of the 2010s.presentEstablished
• Negligible senescenceLongevityThe condition of organisms whose mortality rate and physiological function show no measurable decline with age after reaching maturity.presentEstablished
• Neural correlates of consciousnessMindsThe minimal neural activity jointly sufficient for a specific conscious experience, and the experimental programme that tries to identify it.presentEmerging
• Neural decodingCyberneticsThe inference of a stimulus, intention, or mental state from measured neural activity, and the statistical machinery that makes brain–computer interfaces work.presentEstablished
• Neural dust and ultrasonic implantsCyberneticsA proposed class of millimetre-scale wireless implants powered and read out by ultrasound, intended to replace tethered electrode arrays with distributed untethered sensors.TRL 42030sExperimental
• NeuralinkOrganizationsAmerican neurotechnology company founded in 2016 developing a wireless implanted brain–computer interface with flexible electrode threads inserted by a surgical robot.late 2020sEmerging
• NeuroprostheticsCyberneticsThe engineering field that builds devices interfacing directly with the nervous system to restore lost sensory, motor, cognitive, or autonomic function.TRL 7presentEmerging
• NeurorightsSocietyA proposed set of human rights covering mental privacy, cognitive liberty, and mental integrity, drafted in response to brain-recording and brain-stimulation technology.presentEmerging
• NewLimitOrganizationsA biotechnology company founded in 2021 to screen transcription-factor combinations that restore youthful function to aged cells without changing their identity.2030sEmerging
• Nick BostromPeopleSwedish philosopher who defined existential risk as a field, wrote Superintelligence, and formulated the simulation argument and the vulnerable world hypothesis.presentEstablished
• Nir BarzilaiPeopleIsraeli-American physician-scientist whose centenarian genetics work and proposed TAME trial aim to make aging itself an acceptable regulatory indication.presentEstablished
• Non-invasive neuromodulationCyberneticsTechniques that alter neural excitability through the intact skull or peripheral nerves — magnetic, electrical, and ultrasonic — without surgery or implanted hardware.TRL 8presentEmerging
• NootropicsEnhancementSubstances taken to improve cognition in healthy people, a category whose best-evidenced members produce small effects and whose best-selling members produce none.TRL 5presentContested
• Off-target effects in genome editingGeneticsUnintended DNA changes caused by genome editors, either at sites resembling the target or at the target itself, and the assays used to find them.presentEstablished
• OptogeneticsCyberneticsA technique that makes selected neurons light-sensitive by expressing microbial opsin genes in them, allowing their activity to be switched on or off on a millisecond timescale.TRL 52030sExperimental
• Organ bioprintingBodiesThe additive manufacture of living tissue by depositing cells and biomaterials in a programmed pattern, pursued as a route to transplantable organs but limited so far to simple structures.TRL 42040sExperimental
• Organ shortageBodiesThe persistent gap between the number of people who need a transplant and the number of usable donated organs, which drives most work on engineered and animal-derived replacements.presentEstablished
• OrganoidsBodiesSelf-organizing tissue cultures grown from stem cells that reproduce some of the architecture and function of an organ, used mainly for disease modelling rather than transplantation.TRL 5presentEmerging
• OsseointegrationBodiesThe direct structural fusion of living bone to a titanium implant, the biological principle underlying dental implants and skeletally anchored limb prostheses.TRL 8presentEstablished
• Overpopulation and life extensionSocietyThe objection that extending human lifespan would cause unsustainable population growth, and the demographic modelling that finds the effect smaller than assumed.2050s+Contested
• PantropySpaceThe proposal to engineer humans to suit other worlds rather than engineering those worlds to suit humans, and the ethical problems of designing offspring for an environment.2050s+Speculative
• Parabiosis and young bloodLongevityExperiments joining the circulation of young and old animals, and the attempts to translate their rejuvenating effects into plasma-based treatments for humans.TRL 32030sExperimental
• Partial reprogrammingLongevityTransient expression of pluripotency factors that resets age-associated epigenetic marks in a cell while stopping short of erasing its differentiated identity.TRL 32030sExperimental
• Personal identity and continuityMindsThe question of what makes a person at one time the same person as at another, and what — if anything — must be preserved for that person to survive.indefiniteContested
• Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesGeneticsA therapy in which one patient's tumour is sequenced, its mutation-derived antigens are ranked by algorithm, and a synthetic mRNA encoding them is manufactured for that person alone.TRL 7late 2020sExperimental
• Polygenic embryo screeningReproductionThe ranking of IVF embryos by polygenic risk scores computed from their inferred genotypes, sold commercially since 2019 and rejected as unvalidated by professional genetics bodies.TRL 7presentContested
• PosthumanFoundationsA hypothetical being whose central capacities exceed the human maximum, and, in a separate scholarly tradition, a critique of the humanist subject itself.indefiniteSpeculative
• Powered exoskeletonsBodiesWearable powered frames that apply force in parallel with the wearer's own limbs, used for gait rehabilitation, industrial load support, and proposed strength augmentation.TRL 8presentEmerging
• Precautionary principleSocietyThe regulatory doctrine that scientific uncertainty about a serious or irreversible harm is not by itself a reason to permit the activity that might cause it.presentContested
• Prime editingGeneticsA genome editing method in which a nicking Cas9 fused to a reverse transcriptase writes a new DNA sequence specified by an extended guide RNA.TRL 62030sExperimental
• Procreative beneficenceSocietyJulian Savulescu's principle that prospective parents have moral reason to select, among the children they could have, the one expected to live the best life.presentContested
• ProgeriaLongevityA rare fatal childhood disorder caused by one recurrent LMNA mutation, and the standing test case for whether a genetic disease can accelerate aging itself.presentEstablished
• Proteostasis collapseLongevityThe age-related failure of the chaperone, proteasome and lysosomal systems that keep proteins correctly folded and turned over, and its link to aggregation diseases.presentEstablished
• Psychedelic therapyMindsThe administration of serotonergic psychedelics or MDMA alongside psychological support for psychiatric conditions, in trials that cannot be reliably blinded.TRL 7late 2020sContested
• Quantified selfEnhancementA movement and a method for learning about oneself through personal measurement, built on n-of-1 self-experiment and named by two Wired editors in 2007.presentEstablished
• Radiation tolerance in humansSpaceThe problem of keeping humans healthy under deep-space radiation, and the shielding, pharmacological, and genetic strategies proposed to raise their tolerance.2040sSpeculative
• RapamycinLongevityA macrolide immunosuppressant that inhibits the mTOR growth pathway and extends lifespan across several laboratory species, with no confirmed effect on human aging.TRL 52030sExperimental
• Ray KurzweilPeopleAmerican inventor and futurist who formulated the law of accelerating returns and forecasts human-level machine intelligence by 2029 and a technological singularity by 2045.presentContested
• Reproductive longevityReproductionThe functional lifespan of the reproductive system, and efforts to extend it in the ovary, which loses function decades before most other organs.2030sEmerging
• RespirocytesNanomedicineRobert Freitas's 1998 design study for an artificial red blood cell built as a pressurised micron-scale gas tank, widely cited and never built.indefiniteSpeculative
• Retinal implants and visual prosthesesCyberneticsImplanted devices that restore rudimentary vision to blind people by electrically stimulating surviving retinal neurons or, more invasively, the visual cortex.TRL 6late 2020sExperimental
• Retro BiosciencesOrganizationsA longevity biotechnology company funded by Sam Altman with the stated goal of adding ten years of healthy life, working on autophagy, reprogramming and plasma-inspired therapies.2030sEmerging
• Right to die and the duty to liveSocietyHow the law and ethics of assisted dying interact with radical life extension, and whether an indefinitely extendable life could still be voluntarily ended.presentContested
• Robert FreitasPeopleAmerican researcher whose Nanomedicine volumes set out detailed numerical designs for medical nanorobots, among them the respirocyte, none of which has been fabricated.presentContested
• SarcopeniaLongevityThe age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass, strength and function, the strongest physical predictor of late-life disability and the target of a drug pipeline that has yet to deliver.presentEstablished
• SenolyticsLongevityDrugs that selectively kill senescent cells, an approach that reduces age-related pathology in mice but has so far produced modest or null results in humans.TRL 52030sExperimental
• SENS Research FoundationOrganizationsA California nonprofit founded in 2009 to fund rejuvenation research organized around seven categories of accumulated cellular damage, merged into the Lifespan Research Institute in 2024.presentEstablished
• Sensory augmentationEnhancementDevices and biological modifications that route information the body cannot normally detect into a channel the brain can learn to read.TRL 6late 2020sExperimental
• Shinya YamanakaPeopleJapanese physician-scientist who showed that four transcription factors can reprogram adult cells to a pluripotent state, sharing the 2012 Nobel Prize for the discovery.presentEstablished
• SingularitarianismPeopleThe belief that a technological singularity is likely and that it should be actively prepared for, together with the movements organized around that belief.indefiniteContested
• Sleep and longevityLongevityHabitual sleep duration and timing, an exposure tied to mortality in large observational cohorts and almost untested as a deliberate intervention to extend life.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Somatic gene therapyGeneticsGenetic modification of a living person's body cells to treat disease, producing a change that is not passed on to their children.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Space medicineSpaceThe medical discipline concerned with how spaceflight alters human physiology and with keeping crews functional in an environment the body did not evolve for.presentEstablished
• Speech neuroprosthesisCyberneticsA brain–computer interface that reconstructs intended speech from motor cortex activity, producing text or synthesized voice for people who cannot speak.TRL 52030sExperimental
• Stem cell exhaustionLongevityThe age-related decline in the number and regenerative function of adult stem cells across blood, muscle, gut and skin, and the loss of repair capacity that follows.presentEstablished
• Stem-cell-based embryo modelsReproductionStructures grown by aggregating stem cells that reproduce stages of early embryonic development without fertilisation, and the regulatory categories they fall outside.TRL 3late 2020sExperimental
• StentrodeCyberneticsAn endovascular brain–computer interface in which a stent carrying electrodes is delivered through the jugular vein into a vein overlying the motor cortex.TRL 6late 2020sExperimental
• Steve HorvathPeopleGerman-American biostatistician who built the first multi-tissue epigenetic clock, giving aging research a quantitative readout it could test and argue about.presentEstablished
• Substrate independenceMindsThe claim that mental states depend on a system's functional organization rather than on the material implementing it, so that a mind could run on non-biological hardware.indefiniteContested
• SynchronOrganizationsA neurotechnology company developing an endovascular brain–computer interface implanted through a blood vessel rather than by opening the skull.late 2020sEmerging
• Synthetic genomesGeneticsGenomes designed on a computer and assembled from chemically synthesized DNA, then installed in a cell to see whether the design lives.TRL 42040sExperimental
• Tardigrade genes and human cellsSpaceThe attempt to transfer stress-tolerance proteins from tardigrades into human cells, and the gap between what those experiments showed and how they were reported.2040sExperimental
• Targeted drug deliveryNanomedicineThe engineering of carriers and conjugates that concentrate a drug where it is needed, a field whose clinical successes have come from chemistry rather than from nanoparticle targeting.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Technological singularityFoundationsThe hypothesized point at which machine intelligence begins improving itself fast enough that technological change outruns human ability to predict or steer it.indefiniteSpeculative
• Technology readiness levelFoundationsA nine-point scale, originating at NASA, that rates how far a technology has moved from observed basic principles to proven operational use.presentEstablished
• Telomeres and telomeraseLongevityRepetitive DNA caps that shorten with each cell division, and the enzyme that rebuilds them, linking division limits, cancer risk, and a contested marker of aging.presentEstablished
• The longevity dividendSocietyThe argument that slowing biological aging would produce economic gains larger than curing any individual disease, and the disputes over how that value is calculated.2030sContested
• The teleportation problemMindsA thought experiment in which a person is scanned, destroyed, and rebuilt elsewhere, used to test whether survival requires physical continuity or only psychological continuity.indefiniteSpeculative
• Tissue engineeringBodiesThe construction of living tissue from cells, scaffolds and signalling molecules, a field with approved products for skin and cartilage but no solid organ after three decades.TRL 7presentEstablished
• TranshumanismPeopleThe intellectual and cultural movement holding that human beings can and should use technology to overcome the biological limits of the human condition.presentEstablished
• Utah arrayCyberneticsA silicon microelectrode array of 100 needles on a 10-by-10 grid, the standard sensor for chronic single-neuron recording in human brain–computer interface research.TRL 7presentEstablished
• Uterus transplantationReproductionA temporary transplant of a donated uterus that lets a woman without a working one carry a pregnancy, then is removed so that immunosuppression can stop.TRL 8presentEmerging
• Virtual cell modelsFoundationsComputational models that simulate a cell's molecular behaviour, from complete cell cycles of minimal bacteria to learned predictions of how human cells respond to perturbation.TRL 32030sExperimental
• Wearable health sensorsLongevityConsumer devices worn on the wrist or finger that continuously record pulse waveforms, movement, and skin temperature, and infer heart rhythm, sleep, and activity from them.TRL 9presentEstablished
• Whole brain emulationMindsA proposed procedure for reproducing a particular mind by scanning one brain's structure in detail, building a computational model from the scan, and running it.2050s+Speculative
• XenobotsBodiesSub-millimetre motile constructs assembled from frog embryonic cells and shaped by an evolutionary algorithm, classed as neither robots nor organisms in any settled sense.TRL 32040sExperimental
• XenotransplantationBodiesThe transplantation of organs between species, now pursued with genetically engineered pigs whose antigens and clotting proteins have been altered to survive in a human recipient.TRL 62030sExperimental
• XPRIZE HealthspanOrganizationsA $101 million incentive competition launched in 2023 that rewards a therapy restoring at least a decade of muscle, cognitive and immune function in older adults.late 2020sEmerging
• Yamanaka factorsGeneticsThe four transcription factors Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc, which together convert a differentiated cell into an induced pluripotent stem cell.TRL 7presentEstablished