aging

Articles

• 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
• Altos LabsOrganizationsA biotechnology company launched in 2022 with about three billion dollars in committed funding to develop cellular rejuvenation programming as a medicine.2030sEmerging
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• ImmunosenescenceLongevityThe age-related remodelling of the immune system, in which responses to unfamiliar antigens weaken while chronic activation against familiar ones persists.presentEstablished
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Negligible senescenceLongevityThe condition of organisms whose mortality rate and physiological function show no measurable decline with age after reaching maturity.presentEstablished
• NewLimitOrganizationsA biotechnology company founded in 2021 to screen transcription-factor combinations that restore youthful function to aged cells without changing their identity.2030sEmerging
• Nir BarzilaiPeopleIsraeli-American physician-scientist whose centenarian genetics work and proposed TAME trial aim to make aging itself an acceptable regulatory indication.presentEstablished
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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, renamed Lifespan Research Institute in 2024.presentEstablished
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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