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The biology of growing old, the interventions aimed at slowing or reversing it, and the argument over how much of the lifespan ceiling is real.
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Measurable 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.
The 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.
A United States cryonics organization, founded in 1972, that preserves legally dead members at cryogenic temperatures under a trust structure meant to fund storage indefinitely.
A biotechnology company launched in 2022 with about three billion dollars in committed funding to develop cellular rejuvenation programming as a medicine.
British biogerontologist who proposed the SENS damage-repair framework for rejuvenation and popularized the idea of longevity escape velocity.
The lysosomal pathway by which cells digest their own damaged components, and the process through which most known lifespan-extending interventions appear to act.
An estimate of how far an individual has progressed along the trajectory of age-related decline, expressed in years and compared against their chronological age.
Five regions claimed to have unusually high concentrations of centenarians, and the lifestyle explanations built on that claim.
Preserving the structural information in a brain well enough that a future technology could reconstruct its memories, rather than revive the tissue itself.
An independent research institute in Novato, California, opened in 1999 as the first in the world dedicated solely to the biology of aging.
Alphabet's independent biotechnology company, founded in 2013 to study the biology of aging and develop interventions against age-related disease.
Sustained reduction of energy intake without malnutrition, the oldest and most reproducible lifespan-extending intervention in animals and the least proven in humans.
The 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.
A stable arrest of cell division, triggered by telomere attrition or stress, in which the arrested cell stays metabolically active and secretes inflammatory factors.
The hypothesis that chronic illness can be postponed into a shorter interval before death, so that added years of life are healthy ones.
The sale of clinical laboratory panels directly to asymptomatic consumers as preventive medicine, where accurate assays meet a screening logic that guidelines reject.
A 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.
The practice of preserving legally dead people at cryogenic temperatures in the hope that future medicine can repair and revive them.
American molecular geneticist whose 1993 finding that a single daf-2 mutation doubles the lifespan of C. elegans made aging a tractable genetic problem.
Australian-American biologist at Harvard known for sirtuin and NAD+ research, the information theory of aging, and disputes over the strength of his public claims.
Vitamins, minerals, botanicals, and other compounds sold without pre-market approval, whose large randomized trials have repeatedly failed to show benefit in well-nourished adults.
Statistical predictors that estimate age or mortality risk from DNA methylation patterns at selected sites in the genome.
The 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.
Structured physical activity, the intervention with the strongest evidence for extending healthy life in humans and the benchmark any geroprotective drug must beat.
The use of delivered genes to modify aging biology systemically, demonstrated in mice with telomerase and other constructs and untested in any controlled human trial.
The 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.
Drugs that mimic the gut hormone GLP-1 to lower blood glucose and food intake, producing large weight loss that persists only while treatment continues.
The 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.
The 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.
Deliberate 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.
The age-related remodelling of the immune system, in which responses to unfamiliar antigens weaken while chronic activation against familiar ones persists.
The chronic, low-grade, sterile inflammation that develops with age in the absence of infection, and its disputed role in frailty and age-related disease.
American 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.
The regrowth of an amputated limb from the stump, routine in salamanders and absent in mammals, and the biology that separates the two.
The hypothetical threshold at which medicine adds remaining life expectancy faster than time subtracts it, making death by aging recede indefinitely.
A biotechnology company developing drugs to extend healthy lifespan in dogs, working through the veterinary regulator that will consider lifespan itself as an indication.
The longest duration a human being has lived or could live, distinct from average life expectancy and disputed as to whether any fixed ceiling exists.
A generic diabetes drug proposed as a geroprotector, and the large randomized trial designed to make aging itself an acceptable regulatory indication.
A Virginia nonprofit founded in the early 2000s that used prize competitions to seed research on life extension, regenerative medicine and organ engineering.
Age-related decline in mitochondrial energy production, quality control and signalling, once explained by free-radical damage and now understood as a more tangled process.
Supplements such as nicotinamide riboside and NMN that raise cellular NAD+ levels, with strong pharmacokinetic evidence and weak evidence of any functional benefit.
The condition of organisms whose mortality rate and physiological function show no measurable decline with age after reaching maturity.
A biotechnology company founded in 2021 to screen transcription-factor combinations that restore youthful function to aged cells without changing their identity.
Israeli-American physician-scientist whose centenarian genetics work and proposed TAME trial aim to make aging itself an acceptable regulatory indication.
The objection that extending human lifespan would cause unsustainable population growth, and the demographic modelling that finds the effect smaller than assumed.
Experiments joining the circulation of young and old animals, and the attempts to translate their rejuvenating effects into plasma-based treatments for humans.
Transient expression of pluripotency factors that resets age-associated epigenetic marks in a cell while stopping short of erasing its differentiated identity.
The age-related failure of the chaperone, proteasome and lysosomal systems that keep proteins correctly folded and turned over, and its link to aggregation diseases.
A macrolide immunosuppressant that inhibits the mTOR growth pathway and extends lifespan across several laboratory species, with no confirmed effect on human aging.
The functional lifespan of the reproductive system, and efforts to extend it in the ovary, which loses function decades before most other organs.
A 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.
How the law and ethics of assisted dying interact with radical life extension, and whether an indefinitely extendable life could still be voluntarily ended.
Drugs 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.
A California nonprofit founded in 2009 to fund rejuvenation research organized around seven categories of accumulated cellular damage, renamed Lifespan Research Institute in 2024.
Habitual sleep duration and timing, an exposure tied to mortality in large observational cohorts and almost untested as a deliberate intervention to extend life.
The 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.
German-American biostatistician who built the first multi-tissue epigenetic clock, giving aging research a quantitative readout it could test and argue about.
Repetitive 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.
The argument that slowing biological aging would produce economic gains larger than curing any individual disease, and the disputes over how that value is calculated.
Consumer 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.
A $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.
The four transcription factors Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc, which together convert a differentiated cell into an induced pluripotent stem cell.