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Two different questions, kept apart on purpose. What has already happened is a matter of record, and this corpus holds a great deal of it. What happens next is a matter of argument, and this site attributes those claims rather than making them.
Read the horizon sceptically. Technology forecasting in biology has a poor record, and it fails in a specific direction: near-term timelines are usually too optimistic, because the last unsolved problem is the one nobody can cost. The record is the half of this page with evidence behind it.
What actually happened, assembled from the dated events written inside individual articles. Every entry links to the page that makes the claim.
802 of 802 events· 1825–2026
Benjamin Gompertz shows adult mortality rises roughly exponentially with age, doubling on a timescale of about eight years. This exponential is what any escape-velocity argument has to outrun.
Longevity escape velocityJonathan Hutchinson reports a boy with absent hair and aged skin; Hastings Gilford describes further cases and coins the term progeria, from the Greek for prematurely old.
ProgeriaAlois Alzheimer presents the case of a patient in her fifties with progressive dementia, describing the plaques and tangles found at autopsy; the written report follows in 1907.
Alzheimer's diseaseHenry Van Peters Wilson shows that dissociated sponge cells reaggregate into a functioning organism, the first demonstration that tissue architecture can arise from cells alone.
OrganoidsJ. B. S. Haldane proposes 'ectogenesis' in Daedalus, imagining gestation moved wholly outside the body.
Artificial wombJ. B. S. Haldane argues that biological invention will outrun physical invention and predicts gestation outside the body.
TranshumanismHans Berger records electrical rhythms from the human scalp, establishing that cortical activity can be measured non-invasively.
Brain–computer interfaceJ.D. Bernal argues that space settlement would require redesigning the human body, not merely transporting it.
PantropyWilder Penfield and Herbert Jasper establish intraoperative cortical recording and stimulation mapping at the Montreal Neurological Institute.
Electrocorticography interfacesAlbert Hofmann makes LSD at Sandoz in 1938 and identifies its psychoactivity five years later; the company distributes it to psychiatric researchers.
Psychedelic therapyJack Williamson coins the opposing term in a science fiction story, establishing the world-modifying alternative.
PantropyReinhold Reiter demonstrates myoelectric control in Munich; Soviet and Viennese groups field the first clinical devices, and the 'Russian hand' is exhibited internationally.
Myoelectric prostheticsResearchers including Robert Goodlin perfuse previable human fetuses in pressurised oxygenated fluid. Survival is measured in hours and the work draws lasting ethical criticism.
Artificial wombNeurosurgeons use intraoperative stimulation to localize targets before making destructive lesions, and a handful of chronic stimulation experiments are attempted for pain and psychiatric illness.
Deep brain stimulationPer-Ingvar Brånemark implants titanium optical chambers in rabbit bone to study microcirculation and finds at the end of the study that the chambers cannot be removed; bone has fused to the metal.
OsseointegrationJames Blish's pantropy stories, collected as The Seedling Stars, describe humans engineered for alien environments and coin the term.
PantropyAserinsky and Kleitman report cyclical eye movements during sleep at the University of Chicago, turning sleep from a uniform state into a measurable, staged process.
Sleep and longevityChristian de Duve characterizes the lysosome by cell fractionation, establishing that cells contain a dedicated degradative compartment.
AutophagyPhilip Townes and Johannes Holtfreter show that embryonic amphibian cells broken apart in culture reassemble and sort themselves by tissue type, establishing that architecture can arise from cells with no embryo around them.
XenobotsDenham Harman argues that oxygen radicals produced by metabolism damage cells cumulatively and cause aging.
Mitochondrial dysfunction in agingArthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars describes citizens stored as patterns in a central computer and reissued into bodies, an early literary statement of the idea.
Whole brain emulationWillem Kolff and Tetsuzo Akutsu implant a polyvinyl chloride total artificial heart in a dog at the Cleveland Clinic, which survives about ninety minutes.
Artificial heartAndré Djourno and Charles Eyriès stimulate the auditory nerve of a deaf patient in Paris, who perceives crude sound sensations.
Cochlear implantDjourno and Eyriès stimulate the auditory nerve of a deaf patient; William House begins implanting single-channel cochlear devices in Los Angeles.
NeuroprostheticsJulian Huxley argues that the human species can transcend itself deliberately, and proposes 'transhumanism' as the name for the project.
PosthumanJulian Huxley publishes 'Transhumanism', giving the word its modern currency without founding a movement.
TranshumanismHofmann isolates the active compound from Psilocybe mushrooms; Sandoz markets it to researchers as Indocybin.
Psychedelic therapyUlam's tribute records a conversation about accelerating progress approaching 'some essential singularity in the history of the race'.
Technological singularityMin Chueh Chang produces live rabbit young from eggs fertilised in vitro, establishing that mammalian fertilisation outside the body can yield normal offspring.
In vitro fertilisationTwo-site proportional control becomes standard; thalidomide-related limb difference in Europe drives paediatric fitting programmes.
Myoelectric prostheticsClynes and Kline propose pharmacological and mechanical augmentation of astronauts, introducing the word cyborg for the concept.
PantropyMiomir Vukobratović's group at the Mihajlo Pupin Institute builds legged exoskeletons for rehabilitating paraplegic patients, developing the zero-moment-point criterion that later underpins bipedal robotics.
Powered exoskeletonsHayflick and Moorhead show human fibroblasts stop dividing after a finite number of doublings.
Cellular senescenceEarly crewed vehicles carry all consumables and vent carbon dioxide overboard, an approach adequate for missions measured in days.
Closed-loop life supportWilliam House in Los Angeles implants single-electrode devices and, with the 3M company, brings a wearable version to patients; most researchers doubt that useful speech understanding is achievable.
Cochlear implantHayflick and Moorhead report that normal human fibroblasts stop dividing after a finite number of passages, a phenomenon later tied to telomere shortening.
SenolyticsRobert Ettinger's The Prospect of Immortality argues that freezing the dead is rational if future medicine might repair them. Evan Cooper independently publishes a similar argument and founds the first advocacy society.
CryonicsJohn Gurdon obtains swimming tadpoles from frog eggs carrying nuclei taken from intestinal cells, showing that specialisation does not delete genetic information.
Epigenetic reprogrammingFerruccio Ritossa notices a distinctive puffing pattern in Drosophila salivary-gland chromosomes after a temperature rise, the observation that leads to the heat-shock proteins.
Heat and cold exposureFerruccio Ritossa notices new chromosomal puffing patterns in Drosophila salivary glands after a temperature shift, the first sign of an inducible protein-protection programme.
Proteostasis collapseJohn Gurdon shows that a differentiated nucleus can support development, establishing that differentiation is reversible in principle.
Shinya YamanakaDe Duve coins the term for the observation that lysosomes sometimes contain recognizable pieces of the cell's own cytoplasm.
AutophagyKeith Reemtsma transplants chimpanzee kidneys, one recipient surviving nine months, and James Hardy places a chimpanzee heart in a dying patient. Immunology of the day cannot sustain the grafts.
XenotransplantationCorwin Hansch and Toshio Fujita relate biological activity to physicochemical descriptors, establishing that chemical structure can be regressed against effect.
AI drug discoveryCorneliu Giurgea's team at UCB produces the first racetam while looking for a compound active on the cortex.
NootropicsA Canadian medical expedition to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) collects soil that later yields Streptomyces hygroscopicus.
RapamycinRobert Ettinger's book launches cryonics and supplies the movement with its first practical undertaking.
TranshumanismAAV is identified as a small contaminating particle in adenovirus preparations and shown to require a helper virus.
AAV vectorsBrånemark places titanium fixtures in the jaw of Gösta Larsson, who had a cleft palate and no lower teeth; the implants remain functional for the rest of his life.
OsseointegrationGeneral Electric builds a full-body hydraulic master-slave suit weighing around 680 kg. Only one arm is ever operated, and it moves violently enough to be considered unsafe with a person inside.
Powered exoskeletonsI. J. Good describes recursive self-improvement by an ultraintelligent machine, and notes that control is the open problem.
Technological singularityA Japanese manufacturer markets a pedometer named manpo-kei, or ten-thousand-step meter. The number was a marketing choice and survives as a default goal in software sixty years later.
Wearable health sensorsJohn von Neumann's posthumously edited work distinguishes a machine that copies a description of itself from one that merely assembles copies out of parts lying around it.
XenobotsJames Bedford, a retired psychology professor, is cryopreserved in California. His body was later transferred to Alcor, where it remains.
CryonicsBrindley and Lewin evoke patterned phosphenes from an electrode array over the occipital cortex of a blind volunteer.
NeuroprostheticsBrindley and Lewin implant an array of surface electrodes over the occipital cortex of a blind volunteer, who reports discrete phosphenes at predictable locations.
Retinal implants and visual prosthesesDenton Cooley implants a device designed by Domingo Liotta in a patient at the Texas Heart Institute as a bridge to transplant, supporting him for roughly three days.
Artificial heartPaul Bach-y-Rita's group delivers a camera image as a pattern of vibration on the back and reports that blind users learn to identify objects and judge distance.
Sensory augmentationLinus Pauling's book on vitamin C and the common cold establishes the idea that intakes far above nutritional requirement are therapeutic, a claim later trials did not support.
Dietary supplementsThe Controlled Substances Act places LSD and psilocybin in the most restrictive category, and clinical work in the West effectively stops for two decades.
Psychedelic therapyPaul Berg's laboratory shelves a plan to propagate SV40 tumour virus DNA in E. coli after a colleague raises the possibility of a biohazard.
Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNABacteriorhodopsin is characterized as a light-driven proton pump. Francis Crick later argues that neuroscience needs a method to control one cell type at a time, and speculates that light might provide it.
OptogeneticsChristian Anfinsen shares the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work showing that a denatured enzyme refolds spontaneously, implying the fold is encoded in the sequence.
AI protein designFred and Linda Chamberlain incorporate the Alcor Society for Solid State Hypothermia in California.
Alcor Life Extension FoundationThe Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk operates a sealed 315-cubic-metre facility with algal cultivators and wheat phytotrons, running crews for up to six months with near-complete air and water regeneration and roughly half their food produced internally.
Closed-loop life supportAlcor and the Cryonics Institute are established, the latter by Ettinger himself, with trust structures intended to outlast their founders.
CryonicsThe first treaty banning an entire class of weapons opens for signature. It contains no verification mechanism, and the Soviet Union ran a large offensive programme while a party to it.
Engineered pandemicsGiurgea proposes 'nootropic' and a five-part definition intended to mark out a genuinely new drug class.
NootropicsChristian Anfinsen receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for showing that a protein's amino acid sequence encodes its folded conformation, framing misfolding as a solvable problem.
Proteostasis collapseResearchers at Ayerst in Montreal isolate an antifungal macrolide from the sample and name it rapamycin after the island.
RapamycinAttendees at a nucleic acids meeting vote to send a public warning to the National Academy of Sciences about the hazards of the new splicing methods.
Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNAJacques Vidal at UCLA publishes 'Toward direct brain-computer communication', proposing that computers could interpret EEG in real time as control signals.
Brain–computer interfaceFereidoun Esfandiary describes transhumans as the earliest manifestations of a new evolutionary stage, and posthumans as what follows.
PosthumanA National Academy committee chaired by Berg asks researchers worldwide to defer two classes of experiment voluntarily and calls for an international meeting. Compliance is near-total.
Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNAAbout 140 participants meet for four days in Pacific Grove, agree a framework of physical and biological containment graded to risk, and lift the moratorium.
Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNAHoward Green and James Rheinwald establish serial cultivation of human epidermal keratinocytes, making cultured skin grafts possible and giving the field its first clinical foothold.
Tissue engineeringThe framework is codified for federally funded research and enforced through institutional biosafety committees.
Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNAThe Cambridge, Massachusetts city council imposes a local moratorium and convenes a citizens' review board, which recommends permitting the work with additional conditions.
Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNAUS law bars the FDA from limiting the potency of vitamin and mineral supplements or regulating them as drugs on the basis of dose alone.
Dietary supplementsIngeborg and Erwin Hochmair in Vienna and Graeme Clark's group in Melbourne implant multi-electrode arrays; Clark's first recipient, Rod Saunders, demonstrates speech perception.
Cochlear implantThe dental establishment, initially sceptical, adopts the technique after long-term series are published; bone-anchored hearing aids and craniofacial prostheses follow.
OsseointegrationLiterary theorist Ihab Hassan asks whether Western culture is entering a posthumanist phase in which the humanist subject no longer holds.
PosthumanThe guidelines are progressively loosened as the feared hazards fail to materialise and commercial biotechnology takes hold.
Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNAPatrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards report the first human birth after in vitro fertilisation, achieved in an unstimulated cycle with a single egg.
In vitro fertilisationElizabeth Blackburn and Joseph Gall identify the repeated sequence at the chromosome ends of the ciliate Tetrahymena.
Telomeres and telomeraseBodies stored by the Cryonics Society of California are found thawed and decomposed after the organization ran out of money. The scandal nearly ended the field and permanently shaped how later organizations structure funding.
CryonicsAn aerosol of anthrax spores escapes from a Soviet military microbiology facility, killing at least 66 people. The Soviet government attributed the deaths to contaminated meat until 1992.
Engineered pandemicsYoshinori Kuwabara's group maintains goat fetuses in an extrauterine incubation system for up to several weeks, but with poor neurological outcomes and dependence on paralysis and sedation.
Artificial wombA dispute over whether a charitable bequest must be spent in Marin County ends in a settlement that funds a new institute on aging.
Buck Institute for Research on AgingWireless electrode straps reach endurance athletes, establishing continuous cardiac measurement outside a clinic.
Wearable health sensorsJennifer Jarvis reports in Science that a single female breeds in each colony, with the rest divided into non-reproductive castes.
Naked mole-ratWilliam DeVries implants the pneumatic Jarvik-7 in Barney Clark at the University of Utah as permanent therapy. Clark survives 112 days, tethered to a large pneumatic console, and the case triggers lasting debate about experimental surgery.
Artificial heartNadrian Seeman argues that sequence-asymmetric branched DNA could form rigid lattices, founding the field on paper.
DNA nanotechnologyMichael Klass isolates strains that outlive wild type; Friedman and Johnson later characterize age-1. The field takes little notice.
Cynthia KenyonRechtschaffen's group reports that rats prevented from sleeping die within weeks, with hypermetabolism and thermoregulatory failure and no identified proximate cause.
Sleep and longevityResearchers demonstrate that the viral genes can be removed and replaced with a transgene between the inverted terminal repeats.
AAV vectorsGeorge Glenner and Caine Wong purify and sequence the amyloid-β peptide from cerebrovascular deposits, giving the plaque a molecular identity.
Alzheimer's diseaseThe US Food and Drug Administration approves a single-channel device for adults, followed by the multichannel Nucleus system.
Cochlear implantMembers of an Oregon commune contaminate restaurant salad bars with Salmonella, sickening at least 751 people. It remains the largest bioterrorist attack in US history and used a food-borne organism, not a transmissible one.
Engineered pandemicsAn infant with hypoplastic left heart syndrome receives a baboon heart at Loma Linda and lives 21 days. The case prompts lasting debate about consent and about experimental surgery in neonates.
XenotransplantationDonna Haraway's cyborg manifesto uses the human–machine hybrid to attack the boundaries between organism, machine and gender.
PosthumanThe DEA places MDMA in Schedule I on an emergency basis, over objections from psychotherapists who had been using it; the placement is challenged in court and later made permanent.
Psychedelic therapyCarol Greider and Blackburn detect an enzyme activity in Tetrahymena extracts that adds telomeric repeats to chromosome ends.
Telomeres and telomeraseWhite, Southgate, Thomson and Brenner publish the nematode's complete nervous system: 302 neurons and on the order of 7,000 connections, reconstructed by hand from electron micrographs over more than a decade.
ConnectomicsWhite, Southgate, Thomson and Brenner publish the full wiring diagram of the C. elegans hermaphrodite nervous system from electron micrographs, a project that took over a decade.
Whole brain emulationA coroner rules the death of a neuropreserved member a homicide; Alcor's facility is raided and staff are detained, but no charges result and the organization prevails in subsequent litigation.
Alcor Life Extension FoundationIshino's group at Osaka University reports unusual repeated sequences in Escherichia coli while sequencing an unrelated gene. Their function is unknown.
CRISPR–Cas9Alim-Louis Benabid and Pierre Pollak in Grenoble report that chronic high-frequency stimulation of the ventral intermediate thalamus suppresses tremor as effectively as thalamotomy, and is reversible and adjustable.
Deep brain stimulationWork in several laboratories shows that the GLP-1 fragment released after eating stimulates insulin secretion, identifying it as a physiological incretin.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsChronic high-frequency thalamic stimulation for tremor moves from a Grenoble case series to regulatory approval.
NeuroprostheticsMax More and Tom Bell publish the first issue of Extropy, giving a scattered set of technophilic enthusiasms a shared name.
ExtropianismRobert Klebe adapts an office inkjet to position cells on a substrate, coining 'cytoscribing' and establishing that printing hardware need not kill cells.
Organ bioprintingA National Science Foundation workshop popularises 'tissue engineering' as a name for the emerging combination of biomaterials and cell biology.
Tissue engineeringMax More and colleagues launch Extropy magazine and publish the Principles of Extropy, giving the movement its first organised form.
TranshumanismHans Moravec sets out both the destructive-scan and the gradual neuron-by-neuron replacement routes, framing emulation as a foreseeable consequence of computing trends.
Whole brain emulationESA starts a multi-decade programme to build a five-compartment microbial and plant loop that converts crew waste back into oxygen, water and edible biomass.
Closed-loop life supportIrwin Rosenberg, summarising a meeting on nutrition and aging, proposes 'sarcopenia' for age-related loss of lean mass, arguing that an unnamed phenomenon cannot be studied.
SarcopeniaFM-2030 publishes a book treating the transhuman as a transitional being and offers a questionnaire for measuring how far along one is.
TranshumanismUS approval extends to children aged two and over, shifting the field toward early implantation and provoking organized objection from Deaf associations.
Cochlear implantMore's 'Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy' sets out extropy as a stance rather than a forecast, and drafts the principles.
ExtropianismThe International Union of Physiological Sciences launches a coordinated effort to build quantitative, multiscale models of human physiology and the file standards needed to exchange them.
Human digital twinsAlan Handyside's group biopsies human embryos and selects by sex to avoid X-linked disease, opening the field of embryo testing.
In vitro fertilisationThe Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act creates a licensing authority with a fourteen-day limit on embryo culture, the model most later regimes were measured against.
In vitro fertilisationBarzilai's group at Albert Einstein College of Medicine starts recruiting Ashkenazi Jewish people aged 95 and over, their adult children, and age-matched controls.
Nir BarzilaiRickard Brånemark performs the first transfemoral osseointegrated prosthesis procedure in Gothenburg, using a screw-fixated design later commercialized as OPRA.
OsseointegrationMax More's founding transhumanist essays set out posthumanity as an explicit goal rather than a diagnosis of the present.
PosthumanFiatarone and colleagues show that eight weeks of high-intensity resistance training roughly doubles strength in frail nursing-home residents around age ninety.
SarcopeniaW. French Anderson, R. Michael Blaese, and colleagues at the US National Institutes of Health infuse retrovirally modified T cells into a four-year-old with ADA deficiency.
Somatic gene therapyThe body of James Bedford, cryopreserved in 1967, is moved to Alcor and inspected.
Alcor Life Extension FoundationAlison Goate and colleagues report a mutation in the amyloid precursor protein gene that causes early-onset familial Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's diseaseEight people are sealed into a 1.27-hectare structure in Arizona for two years. Oxygen falls steadily, food runs short, and the mission becomes the field's most-cited cautionary case.
Closed-loop life supportBlake Wilson and colleagues publish a non-simultaneous stimulation strategy that substantially improves open-set speech recognition.
Cochlear implantChen and Seeman assemble a molecule with the connectivity of a cube from synthetic strands.
DNA nanotechnologyAn email list is established that becomes the movement's real centre of gravity for the next decade.
ExtropianismYeast mutants resistant to rapamycin reveal the TOR genes, opening the pathway to molecular study; the mammalian homologue follows in 1994.
Rapamycin'Singularitarian' is coined within the extropian community as a self-description for those who take the singularity seriously.
SingularitarianismJohn Hardy and Gerald Higgins propose in Science that amyloid deposition initiates the disease and everything else follows.
Alzheimer's diseaseYoshinori Ohsumi observes autophagic bodies accumulating in protease-deficient yeast vacuoles and identifies a set of genes required for the process.
AutophagyA California nonprofit is incorporated to publish the journal and run conferences.
ExtropianismJohn Eng and colleagues characterize a DPP-4-resistant GLP-1 receptor agonist in the venom of the Gila monster, the peptide that becomes exenatide.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsA single sperm injected directly into an egg produces pregnancies, extending treatment to men with almost no motile sperm.
In vitro fertilisationCarey and colleagues report that death rates in very large medfly cohorts stop rising at the oldest ages, contradicting a simple exponential model of aging.
Maximum human lifespanPeter Meijer describes a system converting images to soundscapes, later distributed as free software and still in use.
Sensory augmentationCorder and colleagues show that risk of late-onset Alzheimer's rises with each inherited copy of the APOE ε4 allele.
Alzheimer's diseaseKenyon, Chang, Gensch, Rudner and Tabtiang report that a daf-2 mutation roughly doubles C. elegans lifespan and that the effect requires daf-16.
Cynthia KenyonMax More names morphological freedom in an essay on technological self-transformation, framing it as an extension of self-ownership.
Morphological freedomThe term 'technological singularity' is popularized, framed as a prediction horizon rather than a growth curve.
Technological singularityLanger and Vacanti's Science article sets out cells-plus-scaffold-plus-signals as a general strategy for replacing lost tissue, and is taken as the field's founding document.
Tissue engineeringJohn Moult launches a biennial blind assessment in which groups predict structures already solved but not yet released, giving the field an honest scoreboard.
AI protein designOperations relocate to Scottsdale, where the organization remains.
Alcor Life Extension FoundationThe Finnish ATBC trial reports higher lung cancer incidence in male smokers given beta-carotene than in those given placebo.
Dietary supplementsA bill sponsored by Orrin Hatch and Tom Harkin, passed after a large industry-organized public campaign, exempts supplements from pre-market approval and leaves the FDA to prove a marketed product unsafe.
Dietary supplementsLeonard Adleman solves a small Hamiltonian path problem using DNA hybridisation, showing that sequence design can encode computation.
DNA nanotechnologyEd Regis's Wired feature 'Meet the Extropians' introduces the movement to a wide audience, in a tone that is affectionate and skeptical in roughly equal measure.
ExtropianismDimri and colleagues describe senescence-associated β-galactosidase, allowing senescent cells to be stained in tissue.
Cellular senescenceA second beta-carotene trial in smokers and asbestos-exposed workers is stopped ahead of schedule for excess lung cancer and higher total mortality in the supplemented arm.
Dietary supplementsIan Wilmut and Keith Campbell's team at the Roslin Institute produces a lamb from an adult mammary cell nucleus. Hundreds of reconstructed embryos yield a single live birth.
Human cloningMasaru Tomita's group at Keio University builds a simulation environment and assembles a hypothetical self-sustaining cell from 127 genes selected out of the Mycoplasma genitalium genome.
Virtual cell modelsdaf-2 proves to encode an insulin/IGF-1-like receptor and daf-16 a forkhead (FOXO) transcription factor, placing worm longevity in a conserved pathway.
Cynthia KenyonThe FDA approves thalamic stimulation for essential tremor and parkinsonian tremor.
Deep brain stimulationKuro-o and colleagues report that disrupting a previously unknown mouse gene produces a short-lived animal with multiple features resembling human aging.
KlothoA New Jersey clinic injects donor cytoplasm into eggs of women with repeated IVF failure. Around seventeen children are born before the FDA requires an investigational new drug application, halting the practice.
Mitochondrial replacement therapyMcPherron, Lawler and Lee report that mice lacking a new TGF-β family member develop two to three times normal muscle mass, and show the same gene is mutated in double-muscled cattle.
Myostatin inhibitionMcPherron and Lee identify GDF-8, a negative regulator of muscle growth; knockout mice with doubled muscle mass hand the field its most obvious drug target.
SarcopeniaCharles Vacanti's group grows human-ear-shaped cartilage on a polymer scaffold implanted under the skin of an athymic mouse. The image travels far beyond the science it represents.
Tissue engineeringAutologous chondrocyte implantation and engineered skin substitutes reach the market, followed within a few years by the commercial collapse of several of their manufacturers.
Tissue engineeringWinfree and colleagues build two-dimensional crystals from DNA tiles, linking self-assembly to computation.
DNA nanotechnologyNick Bostrom and David Pearce found the World Transhumanist Association, positioning transhumanism as academically respectable and politically non-aligned.
ExtropianismViral delivery of IGF-1 to mouse muscle increases mass and preserves function with age, and is immediately discussed as a doping risk.
Gene dopingMice, cattle, pigs, cats, and in 2005 the first dog are cloned. Commercial pet and livestock cloning follows.
Human cloningNick Bostrom and David Pearce establish a membership organization and publish the first Transhumanist Declaration.
Humanity+The Journal of Transhumanism, later the Journal of Evolution and Technology, gives the movement its first peer-reviewed outlet.
Humanity+Modafinil is approved in the United States for narcolepsy, and becomes the most-studied off-label wakefulness agent.
NootropicsBodnar and colleagues show that expressing hTERT in normal human cells extends their replicative lifespan indefinitely.
Telomeres and telomeraseNick Bostrom and David Pearce found the WTA and draft the Transhumanist Declaration, aiming for academic respectability rather than Californian libertarianism.
TranshumanismGroups led by John Chapin, Miguel Nicolelis, and Andrew Schwartz show that rats and monkeys can control levers and robotic arms using decoded cortical ensemble activity.
Brain–computer interfaceThe Buck Institute begins operations on an I. M. Pei-designed campus in Novato, the first research organization devoted solely to the biology of aging.
Buck Institute for Research on AgingThe FDA approves MiniMed's system, which records glucose blind and is downloaded at a clinic days later. It is a diagnostic tool for physicians, not a display for patients.
Continuous glucose monitoringRemoving germline precursor cells extends lifespan, showing that the reproductive system regulates aging in the rest of the animal.
Cynthia KenyonGerman and Australian groups develop press-fit implants that shorten the two-stage protocol and broaden the eligible population.
OsseointegrationN. Katherine Hayles traces how information came to be treated as separable from its material substrate, and argues against that separation.
PosthumanStarted by the parents of an affected child, it builds the patient registry, diagnostic programme, and cell bank that later research depends on.
ProgeriaThe drug is approved in the United States to prevent rejection in kidney transplantation, establishing decades of human safety data at immunosuppressive doses.
RapamycinEliezer Yudkowsky publishes essays defining singularitarianism as a commitment to a beneficial transition rather than merely a prediction.
SingularitarianismSpiegel, Leproult and Van Cauter restrict eleven healthy young men to four hours in bed for six nights and report impaired glucose tolerance.
Sleep and longevityAn 18-year-old with partial ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency dies of a systemic inflammatory response four days after receiving a high dose of adenoviral vector at the University of Pennsylvania. Trials are halted and the field contracts for a decade.
Somatic gene therapyBilateral implantation becomes common, and electric-acoustic 'hybrid' devices preserve residual low-frequency hearing in the implanted ear.
Cochlear implantHanahan and Weinberg condense oncology into six acquired capabilities, demonstrating that a well-chosen list can organize a field.
Hallmarks of agingA Scottish hospital stops performing elective amputations on patients requesting removal of healthy limbs after two such operations become public, opening a long debate on the limits of consent.
Morphological freedomA US programme on exoskeletons for human performance augmentation funds the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton and spawns Ekso Bionics and Lockheed's HULC.
Powered exoskeletonsAubrey de Grey formulates the seven-category damage-repair model and argues it in the biogerontology literature and in Ending Aging.
SENS Research FoundationThe Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence is founded to work on the problem directly.
SingularitarianismParis and London trials restore immunity in boys with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency, but several later develop T-cell leukaemia after the retroviral vector integrates near the LMO2 proto-oncogene.
Somatic gene therapyA team in Saudi Arabia transplants a uterus from a living donor. The graft is removed after about three months when its blood supply thromboses.
Uterus transplantationAlcor switches from freezing to vitrification using low-toxicity cryoprotectant solutions, displacing ice formation as the dominant damage mechanism in well-perfused tissue.
Alcor Life Extension FoundationA randomised trial shows that a left ventricular assist device roughly halves one-year mortality compared with medical therapy in patients ineligible for transplant, converting assist devices from a bridge into a destination therapy.
Artificial heartCygnus wins approval for a wrist device that draws fluid through the skin by reverse iontophoresis. Skin irritation and unreliable readings sink it, and it is off the market within a few years.
Continuous glucose monitoringCryonics organizations switch from freezing to vitrification using low-toxicity cryoprotectant mixtures, displacing ice formation as the dominant damage mechanism in well-perfused tissue.
CryonicsAustralian researchers inserting an immune-signalling gene into mousepox found it killed vaccinated mice. The result was incidental to the project's contraceptive aim and demonstrated that virulence enhancement could be stumbled into.
Dual-use research of concernSpores mailed within the United States kill five people and infect seventeen. The FBI concluded the material originated in a US biodefence laboratory.
Engineered pandemicsSchultz's group incorporates a non-standard amino acid into a protein in living E. coli using an orthogonal synthetase–tRNA pair assigned to the amber codon.
Genetic code expansion and recodingAnders Sandberg argues the right is symmetrical: it includes the right to refuse modification, not only the right to pursue it.
Morphological freedomThe baseball player's cryopreservation becomes a public dispute among his heirs and generates lasting negative coverage.
Alcor Life Extension FoundationLowering daf-2 activity only after development still extends lifespan, separating aging from developmental programming.
Cynthia KenyonApproval extends to the subthalamic nucleus and globus pallidus interna for advanced Parkinson's disease, the indication that now accounts for most implants.
Deep brain stimulationNick Bostrom's survey of existential risks proposes retarding dangerous technologies and accelerating protective ones, naming the strategy differential technological development.
Differential technological developmentA team assembled infectious poliovirus from mail-order DNA fragments using the published sequence, showing that a virus could be reconstructed without access to a natural sample.
Dual-use research of concernA team reconstructs infectious poliovirus from published sequence and commercially ordered fragments, showing a virus can be rebuilt without a natural sample.
Engineered pandemicsWADA convenes scientific meetings on gene transfer and adds gene doping to the Prohibited List before any means of doing it is available.
Gene dopingMichael Grieves formulates the pairing of a physical artefact with a virtual counterpart updated from its data; NASA and US Air Force researchers give the idea its name and its first serious application.
Human digital twinsArking and colleagues describe KL-VS, a klotho variant carrying two amino-acid substitutions, and report that homozygous carriers are underrepresented among elderly people in three populations.
KlothoOeppen and Vaupel document a linear rise in best-practice life expectancy over 160 years, undermining the idea of a fixed demographic ceiling.
Longevity escape velocityNerve transfers create new intuitive control sites; a case series demonstrates real-time control of multifunction arms.
Myoelectric prostheticsGeorg Nagel, Peter Hegemann and colleagues characterize channelrhodopsin-1 and channelrhodopsin-2 from green algae as directly light-gated ion channels.
OptogeneticsGero Miesenböck's group controls neurons using a multi-component invertebrate phototransduction system, establishing the concept before a single-gene tool existed.
OptogeneticsEckard Wimmer's group assembles an infectious poliovirus genome from mail-order oligonucleotides, the first demonstration that a viral genome can be built from sequence data alone.
Synthetic genomesKuhlman and colleagues in the Baker laboratory design a protein with a fold not seen in nature and confirm it crystallographically.
AI protein designWork in C. elegans shows autophagy genes are required for the lifespan extension produced by reduced insulin/IGF-1 signalling, dietary restriction and TOR inhibition.
AutophagyMice heterozygous for the IGF-1 receptor show a modest lifespan increase, concentrated in females — the mammalian echo of the worm result.
Cynthia KenyonA cloned Pyrenean ibex is born and dies within minutes, the only extinct animal ever brought to term and still the only one.
De-extinctionHumanitarian device exemptions cover dystonia and, later, treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Deep brain stimulationAustin Burt argues that site-specific selfish genetic elements could be engineered to spread deliberately through wild populations, and sets out the resistance problem that would follow.
Gene drivesWork in C. elegans shows that the heat-shock transcription factor HSF-1 is required for the extended life of insulin-signalling mutants, linking a thermal defence system to aging biology.
Heat and cold exposureTwo prizes are announced: one for the longest-lived mouse, one for the greatest late-onset extension, the latter designed to reward rejuvenation rather than slowed development.
Methuselah FoundationAndrzej Bartke wins the longevity category with a dwarf mouse living beyond 1,800 days; Stephen Spindler wins the rejuvenation category with late-onset caloric restriction.
Methuselah FoundationA CETP variant is found over-represented among the long-lived, whose carriers have larger lipoprotein particles. The association later fails to yield a drug.
Nir BarzilaiThomas Boland's group at Clemson shows that modified commercial inkjet printers can deposit viable mammalian cells in patterns.
Organ bioprintingTwo groups independently trace the syndrome to lamin A; the recurrent silent substitution and the resulting truncated protein are described.
ProgeriaPigs lacking GGTA1 are produced, removing the antigen responsible for hyperacute rejection and making the modern programme possible.
XenotransplantationContinuous-flow pumps displace pulsatile ones. A pneumatic total artificial heart is approved as a bridge to transplant, and remains the only one in sustained use for two decades.
Artificial heartMatthew Nagle, paralysed by a spinal cord injury, receives a Utah array in the BrainGate pilot and controls a cursor, a television, and a prosthetic hand.
Brain–computer interfaceAfter roughly a decade of adverse-event reports and several deaths, the FDA declares ephedrine-alkaloid supplements adulterated; a district court sets the rule aside before an appeals court upholds it in 2006.
Dietary supplementsGroups working with epilepsy patients show that high-gamma activity from surface electrodes supports rapid, accurate cursor control learned within minutes.
Electrocorticography interfacesMore drafts an explicit counterweight to the precautionary principle at an Extropy Institute summit.
ExtropianismTransgenic mice overexpressing PPARδ show large increases in running endurance, producing the 'marathon mouse' framing.
Gene dopingClaims of human stem cell lines derived by nuclear transfer are published and then retracted as fabricated; the cloned dog from the same laboratory proves genuine.
Human cloningJames Hughes's Citizen Cyborg argues for regulated, universally accessible enhancement, opening a lasting split with the libertarian membership.
Humanity+Testing begins at three sites in genetically heterogeneous UM-HET3 mice under a shared protocol.
Interventions Testing ProgramDe Grey's PLoS Biology essay frames the threshold and argues that reaching it, not curing aging, is the relevant near-term goal.
Longevity escape velocityMice carrying a proofreading-deficient mitochondrial polymerase accumulate mtDNA mutations and show premature aging phenotypes, at mutation loads far above those seen in normal aging.
Mitochondrial dysfunction in agingA German infant with a homozygous splice-site mutation in MSTN is described with pronounced muscle hypertrophy and no reported illness attributable to it.
Myostatin inhibitionA participant with tetraplegia in the BrainGate pilot controls a cursor and a prosthetic hand with a penetrating array.
NeuroprostheticsAaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.
Proteostasis collapseNeil Harbisson, who has achromatopsia, begins wearing a head-mounted device that converts colour to pitch, later reporting perception of frequencies outside the visible range.
Sensory augmentationFrancis Fukuyama names transhumanism the world's most dangerous idea in Foreign Policy, marking its arrival as a target of mainstream political theory.
TranshumanismAmal Graafstra implants a radio-frequency tag in his hand to open doors, establishing the template for hardware implants outside medicine.
Biohacking and grindersSporns, Tononi and Kötter propose 'connectome' for a comprehensive structural description of a nervous system, by analogy with the genome.
ConnectomicsMedtronic's Guardian RT and DexCom's STS put a live number, a trend arrow, and alarms in the user's hand for the first time.
Continuous glucose monitoringMojica and, independently, other groups notice that CRISPR spacers correspond to phage and plasmid sequences, suggesting an immune role.
CRISPR–Cas9The virus responsible for the deadliest pandemic on record was rebuilt from sequence recovered from preserved tissue and characterised in animals.
Dual-use research of concernExenatide is approved in the United States for type 2 diabetes, twice-daily by injection.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsTransgenic mice carrying extra klotho from conception live longer than controls, and the protein is shown to repress insulin and IGF1 signalling.
KlothoMIT Technology Review offers a prize for a submission showing the SENS programme unworthy of debate. The judges award no prize, concluding that SENS is highly speculative but has not been refuted.
Longevity escape velocityTargeting catalase to mitochondria extends median mouse lifespan by roughly a fifth, the strongest single result supporting the oxidative theory.
Mitochondrial dysfunction in agingBoyden, Zhang, Deisseroth and colleagues show that channelrhodopsin-2 alone confers millisecond-precision light control on mammalian neurons.
OptogeneticsMIT Technology Review offers a prize for a refutation of SENS; judges conclude that the framework has not been disproven but is not scientifically demonstrated either.
SENS Research FoundationKurzweil's The Singularity Is Near reaches a mass audience and fixes 2045 in public memory as the date.
SingularitarianismBin Zhang and Horvath publish a general framework for weighted gene co-expression network analysis, later packaged as WGCNA.
Steve HorvathRay Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near argues from exponential trends across many technologies and dates the event to 2045.
Technological singularityHenry Markram launches a project at EPFL to reconstruct cortical microcircuitry in biophysical detail, the first sustained attempt at bottom-up brain simulation at scale.
Whole brain emulationIn a haemophilia B trial, factor IX expression rises then falls as capsid-specific T cells destroy transduced hepatocytes, defining the field's central obstacle.
AAV vectorsTakahashi and Yamanaka show that four transcription factors can return an adult cell to a pluripotent state.
Altos LabsRothemund folds a viral scaffold into arbitrary two-dimensional shapes with short staple strands, making complex structures routine.
DNA nanotechnologyTakahashi and Yamanaka convert mouse fibroblasts into induced pluripotent stem cells using Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc.
Epigenetic reprogrammingThe board announces the organization's mission is complete, arguing that its ideas have dispersed into the wider culture and no longer need a dedicated body.
ExtropianismIn the trial of German athletics coach Thomas Springstein, correspondence emerges in which he seeks Repoxygen, an experimental EPO gene-therapy construct. No evidence of administration to an athlete is established.
Gene dopingTransgenic mice engineered to run a slightly lower core body temperature show longer median lifespan without eating less, dissociating body temperature from caloric intake.
Heat and cold exposureTakahashi and Yamanaka reprogramme mouse fibroblasts with four transcription factors.
Induced pluripotent stem cellsKlotho is shown to convert a canonical FGF receptor into a specific receptor for FGF23, placing the protein at the centre of phosphate regulation.
KlothoPeter Thiel pledges $3.5 million — direct funding plus a matching challenge — one of the first large private gifts to life-extension research and a signal to other technology donors.
Methuselah FoundationGriffiths and colleagues at Johns Hopkins report that psilocybin reliably occasions experiences volunteers rate as personally meaningful, re-establishing the drug as a legitimate subject of study.
Psychedelic therapyTakahashi and Yamanaka narrow twenty-four candidate factors to four that reprogram mouse fibroblasts to pluripotency.
Shinya YamanakaAnthony Atala's group reports autologous bladder constructs implanted in seven young patients with spina bifida, the first engineered organ-like structure followed for years in humans.
Tissue engineeringThe quantified-self label is coined and the DIYbio network forms, giving amateur biology a shared identity and a code of conduct.
Biohacking and grindersBarrangou and colleagues at Danisco show experimentally that Streptococcus thermophilus acquires new spacers after phage challenge and becomes resistant.
CRISPR–Cas9The FDA finalizes good manufacturing practice requirements for supplements, phased in over three years, covering identity and purity but not efficacy.
Dietary supplementsThe US National Institutes of Health funds a large-scale effort to characterise the microbial communities of healthy people, which supplies the reference data later cohorts are compared against.
Gut microbiomeEuropean framework programmes fund a coordinated push toward integrated models of human physiology, followed by a standing institute to maintain the effort.
Human digital twinsTwo groups independently derive human iPSCs, one using the original four factors and one a partly different set.
Induced pluripotent stem cellsDe Grey and Michael Rae set out the seven-category damage-repair programme in book form, with escape velocity as its stated objective.
Longevity escape velocityMeta-analyses of antioxidant supplement trials find no mortality benefit, and vitamin E is associated with increased prostate cancer risk in a large prevention trial.
Mitochondrial dysfunction in agingIndependently actuated fingers reach the market, offering many grip patterns but no corresponding increase in control channels.
Myoelectric prostheticsA myostatin mutation is found in racing whippets, with heterozygotes overrepresented among the fastest dogs, while independent work shows myostatin-null mouse muscle generates less force per unit area.
Myostatin inhibitionHalorhodopsin and archaerhodopsin provide optical silencing; red-shifted and faster variants broaden the toolkit.
OptogeneticsConsortium studies of hundreds of thousands of participants produce polygenic scores with non-trivial predictive power for height, education and several common diseases.
Polygenic embryo screeningA single-arm trial of the farnesyltransferase inhibitor opens at Boston Children's Hospital.
ProgeriaGary Wolf and Kevin Kelly begin the Quantified Self blog; the first consumer activity-tracker companies are founded around the same time.
Quantified selfYamanaka's group and, independently, James Thomson's group report reprogrammed human cells.
Shinya YamanakaAn IARC working group places shift work involving circadian disruption in Group 2A, tying disturbed sleep timing to cancer risk as a hazard rather than a quantified one.
Sleep and longevityDried tardigrades flown on FOTON-M3 survive vacuum exposure in low Earth orbit; solar ultraviolet, not vacuum, proves to be the dominant killer.
Tardigrade genes and human cellsJudith Campisi's group characterizes the senescence-associated secretory phenotype, showing that senescent cells actively signal to their neighbours rather than simply sitting inert.
Buck Institute for Research on AgingOrkin's laboratory shows that BCL11A is the developmental-stage repressor that silences fetal haemoglobin after birth.
CasgevyCoppé, Campisi and colleagues define the secretory phenotype and show senescent cells act on their neighbours.
Cellular senescenceThe urine processor and water recovery system enter service, followed by a Sabatier reactor that recovers water from metabolic carbon dioxide.
Closed-loop life supportA JDRF-funded trial in type 1 diabetes reports improved HbA1c with CGM, with the effect concentrated in adults aged 25 and over.
Continuous glucose monitoringVariants near FOXO3 are associated with exceptional longevity in a Japanese-American cohort, and the association replicates in other populations.
Cynthia KenyonHarald Ott and Doris Taylor perfusion-decellularize a rat heart, reseed it with neonatal cardiac cells, and record weak but coordinated contraction under electrical stimulation.
Decellularized scaffoldsThe FDA accepts a metabolic simulator of type 1 diabetes as a substitute for animal testing in the preclinical evaluation of closed-loop insulin controllers.
Human digital twinsPersson and Savulescu argue that cognitive enhancement without moral enhancement is dangerous; Thomas Douglas independently defends the attenuation of counter-moral emotions.
Moral enhancementAntibody and ligand-trap programmes in muscular dystrophy and inclusion body myositis increase lean mass but miss their functional endpoints, and a receptor trap is halted for vascular side effects.
Myostatin inhibitionAn informal reader survey finds about one in five respondents reporting non-medical use of drugs for focus, memory or concentration, and puts the issue on the scientific agenda.
NootropicsNick Bostrom defines a posthuman as a being with at least one general capacity far beyond any unaided human's, naming healthspan, cognition and emotion.
PosthumanBalch, Morimoto, Dillin and Kelly propose 'proteostasis' for the integrated network and argue it is a druggable target across folding diseases.
Proteostasis collapseAbout thirty people attend the first Quantified Self meetup, at Kevin Kelly's studio in Pacifica, California, establishing the format the movement kept.
Quantified selfSingularity University is founded by Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis, oriented toward entrepreneurship rather than risk.
SingularitarianismThe J. Craig Venter Institute assembles the Mycoplasma genitalium genome, though it is not installed in a cell.
Synthetic genomesRobin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky publicly argue over whether takeoff would be local and fast or distributed and gradual.
Technological singularityThe WTA rebrands as Humanity+; the movement's centre of gravity shifts toward well-funded technology firms and away from membership organisations.
TranshumanismAnders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom publish a technical report at the Future of Humanity Institute defining the scan-translate-run framework and its levels of detail.
Whole brain emulationGreg Fahy's group reports a rabbit kidney vitrified, rewarmed and transplanted that sustained the animal, the first such result for a whole mammalian organ.
CryonicsDouglas and colleagues extend the method to solid 3D shapes built on a honeycomb lattice.
DNA nanotechnologyThree groups publish PET-imaging evidence in a single journal issue that adult humans retain cold-activated brown adipose tissue, overturning the view that it disappears after infancy.
Heat and cold exposureA rewritten Transhumanist Declaration is adopted, emphasizing risk, access and the moral standing of non-human minds.
Humanity+Begun at 600 days of age, rapamycin raises age at 90% mortality by 14% in females and 9% in males, at all three sites.
Interventions Testing ProgramThe damage-repair research programme is separated into an independent organization, SENS Research Foundation.
Methuselah FoundationA review of mouse models altering antioxidant enzymes finds that most changes to oxidative defences do not alter lifespan.
Mitochondrial dysfunction in agingShoukhrat Mitalipov's group reports healthy macaques born after maternal spindle transfer, the first primate demonstration.
Mitochondrial replacement therapyToshiro Sato and Hans Clevers show that a single Lgr5-positive intestinal stem cell builds crypt-villus structures in a gel without any supporting mesenchyme.
OrganoidsWork in C. elegans locates the loss of folding capacity in early adulthood and shows that hundreds of proteins become insoluble with age.
Proteostasis collapseThe Interventions Testing Program reports that rapamycin started at 600 days of age extends median lifespan in genetically heterogeneous mice of both sexes.
RapamycinThe programme is spun out of the Methuselah Foundation as an independent nonprofit with its own laboratory in Mountain View.
SENS Research FoundationGene therapy adding a long-wavelength opsin gives adult dichromatic monkeys trichromatic colour vision, showing an adult brain can exploit a channel it never developed with.
Sensory augmentationBlackburn, Greider and Jack Szostak share the prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of telomeres and telomerase.
Telomeres and telomeraseA clip-on accelerometer sold direct to consumers, framed around steps and sleep rather than sport.
Wearable health sensorsThe neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth founds the Brain Preservation Foundation and announces a prize for demonstrably complete preservation of a mammalian connectome.
Brain preservationThe NIH funds large-scale diffusion and functional MRI mapping in healthy adults, establishing macroscale connectomics as a standard method.
ConnectomicsGroups at Yale, Massachusetts General and Harvard report decellularized rat lungs supporting gas exchange for hours after implantation, and recellularized rat livers metabolizing drugs in perfusion.
Decellularized scaffoldsHuman and porcine hearts, lungs, livers and kidneys are decellularized successfully; recellularizing them to functional cell numbers is not achieved.
Decellularized scaffoldsEngineered ribosomes that read four-base codons allow multiple distinct non-standard amino acids to be encoded in one protein.
Genetic code expansion and recodingNovo Nordisk's daily analogue is approved for type 2 diabetes; a higher-dose version is approved for weight management in 2014.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsThe movement's intellectual energy migrates to AI risk research, longevity companies and academic bioethics; the organization's activity declines.
Humanity+Robert Edwards receives the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Steptoe had died in 1988 and the prize is not awarded posthumously.
In vitro fertilisationBlocking phosphate retention in klotho-null mice reverses most of the premature-aging phenotype, and a high-phosphate diet brings it back.
KlothoA Newcastle team shows the technique works in abnormally fertilised human zygotes with low mitochondrial carryover.
Mitochondrial replacement therapyStudies report that serotonin manipulation shifts harm aversion in hypothetical dilemmas, that oxytocin increases in-group favouritism, and that propranolol reduces implicit racial bias.
Moral enhancementThe FDA approves sipuleucel-T for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Its pivotal trial extended median survival by roughly four months and did not delay disease progression at all.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesWolf's essay in The New York Times Magazine and a TED talk carry the label beyond the Bay Area technology community.
Quantified selfA European working group publishes the first operational definition, combining low muscle mass with low strength or performance.
SarcopeniaFunded projects yield companies including Cyclarity Therapeutics, working on cyclodextrins for arterial cholesterol, and Revel Pharmaceuticals, working on crosslink-breaking enzymes.
SENS Research FoundationA meta-analysis of prospective cohorts confirms elevated all-cause mortality at both short and long self-reported sleep durations.
Sleep and longevityA synthesized Mycoplasma mycoides genome is transplanted into a recipient cell, which then replicates under the control of the built chromosome.
Synthetic genomesThe philosopher Max More serves as chief executive, professionalizing operations and raising the organization's public profile.
Alcor Life Extension FoundationWork at the Mayo Clinic, building on the senescence biology developed at the Buck and elsewhere, shows that removing senescent cells improves healthspan measures in mice.
Buck Institute for Research on AgingA company is founded to develop senolytic drugs, with Campisi among its scientific founders.
Buck Institute for Research on AgingBaker and colleagues use the INK-ATTAC transgene to kill p16-positive cells in a progeroid mouse, delaying several age-related pathologies.
Cellular senescenceCharpentier's group finds a second small RNA required for CRISPR RNA maturation in the type II system, completing the picture of the Cas9 machinery.
CRISPR–Cas9Extended follow-up of a prostate cancer prevention trial finds significantly more prostate cancer among men who had taken vitamin E.
Dietary supplementsTwo laboratories produced avian influenza variants transmissible between ferrets by respiratory droplet. A US advisory board first recommended redacting the methods, then reversed; the papers were published in full after a voluntary research moratorium.
Dual-use research of concernFerret-transmissible avian influenza variants are made in two laboratories. A US advisory board recommends redacting the methods, then reverses; the papers appear in full.
Engineered pandemicsHayashi and Saitou reconstitute germ-cell specification in culture; the resulting cells produce fertile sperm after transplantation into mouse testes.
In vitro gametogenesisRapamycin extends lifespan again at a different dose; resveratrol and simvastatin do not, at the doses tested.
Interventions Testing ProgramBerger and colleagues fit a nonlinear model of hippocampal CA3-to-CA1 transmission in rats performing a delayed-nonmatch-to-sample task. Model-driven stimulation restores performance after the pathway is pharmacologically blocked, and improves it in intact animals.
Memory prosthesisJohn Harris argues that moral worth requires the capacity to choose otherwise, and that engineering good behaviour removes what makes it good.
Moral enhancementKim et al. sequence the genome and report features consistent with tumour resistance, hairlessness and tolerance of low oxygen.
Naked mole-ratPeople in the cohort who passed 95 report drinking, exercise, diet and weight histories no better than those of a national survey sample from the same birth cohort, a result widely over-read in popular coverage.
Nir BarzilaiYoshiki Sasai's group reports that mouse embryonic stem cells spontaneously form a stratified optic cup in culture, establishing that complex organ morphogenesis can be intrinsic.
OrganoidsMedical exoskeletons for spinal cord injury and stroke gain regulatory clearance in Japan, Europe, and the United States; the first personal-use clearance in the US comes in 2014.
Powered exoskeletonsThe first Quantified Self conference is held in Mountain View, California in May, followed by a European meeting in Amsterdam in November; the show-and-tell format is retained at scale.
Quantified selfSecond Sight's 60-electrode epiretinal implant is approved in Europe for retinitis pigmentosa, followed by a US humanitarian device exemption in 2013.
Retinal implants and visual prosthesesBaker and colleagues use the INK-ATTAC transgene to kill p16-positive cells on demand, delaying cataract, sarcopenia, and fat loss in a fast-aging mouse strain.
SenolyticsA team at Akdeniz University in Turkey transplants a uterus from a multi-organ donor. The first pregnancies are lost; a live birth from the same graft is reported only years afterwards.
Uterus transplantationGlybera is licensed in Europe and later withdrawn; Luxturna is approved in the United States for RPE65 retinal dystrophy.
AAV vectorsA team from Geoffrey Hinton's group wins Merck's Molecular Activity Challenge with multi-task neural networks, drawing pharmaceutical attention to the method.
AI drug discoveryBrainGate and University of Pittsburgh teams report multi-degree-of-freedom robotic arm control by participants with tetraplegia, including self-feeding.
Brain–computer interfaceJinek and colleagues show Cas9 can be aimed at a chosen DNA sequence and that its two natural RNAs can be fused into one engineered guide; Gasiunas and colleagues independently report the same cleavage biochemistry.
CRISPR–Cas9A barrel-shaped origami device latched by aptamers opens only on cells displaying specified antigens, delivering payloads in cell culture.
DNA nanotechnologyThe ELDERMET cohort links faecal microbiota composition in older adults to living arrangements, diet quality, frailty and inflammatory markers.
Gut microbiomeVitrification results are judged good enough for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine to drop the experimental label from oocyte cryopreservation, and elective egg banking becomes a commercial market.
In vitro fertilisationThe same approach yields oocytes, though maturation still requires transplantation of reconstituted ovaries into a live animal.
In vitro gametogenesisShinya Yamanaka shares the prize with John Gurdon for showing that mature cells can be reprogrammed to pluripotency.
Induced pluripotent stem cellsRelated work in macaques shows that stimulation patterned on the firing observed during successful encoding improves later performance on a delayed match-to-sample task.
Memory prosthesisSavulescu and Persson answer Harris with a thought experiment: a system that intervenes only to prevent great harms, leaving ordinary choice untouched.
Moral enhancementOptogenetic reactivation of hippocampal cells labelled during learning elicits the corresponding memory in mice, and a false memory is created by pairing artificial reactivation with a new experience.
OptogeneticsJordan Miller and colleagues print lattices of carbohydrate glass, cast tissue around them and dissolve them away, leaving open perfusable channels inside a cell-laden gel.
Organ bioprintingThe first gene therapy licensed in a Western market, for lipoprotein lipase deficiency. It is priced near one million euros, treats almost nobody, and is withdrawn in 2017.
Somatic gene therapyThomas Oxley and Nicholas Opie establish the company in Melbourne around an endovascular electrode concept developed with defence research funding.
SynchronLefkowitz, Edwards and Balayla publish conditions for ethically permissible uterine transplantation, covering recipient, donor and institutional requirements.
Uterus transplantationMats Brännström's group at the University of Gothenburg performs nine living-donor transplants, most from mothers and other close relatives, after more than a decade of animal work.
Uterus transplantationKarr and colleagues in Markus Covert's laboratory publish a model of Mycoplasma genitalium covering every annotated gene function, and use it to direct experiments that recovered previously unmeasured kinetic parameters.
Virtual cell modelsGrindhouse Wetware implants a Bluetooth-enabled temperature sensor in a member's forearm, installed by a body-modification artist rather than a physician.
Biohacking and grindersA Duke group links an encoder rat's motor cortex to a decoder rat's via microstimulation; the decoder rat performs a lever task above chance using information it could not otherwise obtain.
Brain-to-brain interfacesA Harvard-affiliated team uses human EEG to trigger focused ultrasound over a rat's motor cortex, producing a tail movement.
Brain-to-brain interfacesA University of Washington pair transmit a motor-imagery signal from one person's EEG to magnetic stimulation over another's motor cortex, moving a finger to fire in a video game.
Brain-to-brain interfacesCalico is announced with Arthur Levinson as chief executive and a mandate to study aging and age-related disease.
Calico Life SciencesThe erythroid-specific BCL11A enhancer is characterised and then dissected base by base with Cas9, defining a narrow, lineage-restricted target.
CasgevyTheranos opens wellness centres inside Walgreens stores, first in California and then across the Phoenix area, promising a full laboratory panel from a fingerstick sample.
Consumer blood testingGroups led by Zhang, Church and others adapt the system to mammalian cells within months of the 2012 papers.
CRISPR–Cas9A TEDx conference organised by Revive & Restore and National Geographic gives de-extinction its name and its research agenda, including passenger pigeon and heath hen projects.
De-extinctionA regenerated rat kidney, reseeded with endothelial and epithelial cells, produces dilute urine when perfused and after orthotopic transplantation.
Decellularized scaffoldsTwo industry-sponsored randomised trials of DBS for treatment-resistant depression are halted for futility, chilling psychiatric applications for several years.
Deep brain stimulationA participant with tetraplegia controls a robotic arm in three dimensions using a subdural array, demonstrating that surface signals support continuous control.
Electrocorticography interfacesAbad and colleagues express OSKM throughout living mice and obtain pluripotent cells in multiple organs, along with lethal teratomas.
Epigenetic reprogrammingSeveral groups show that catalytically dead Cas9, alone or fused to a KRAB repressor domain, can silence a targeted gene in bacteria and in human cells.
Epigenome editingAll 321 amber codons are removed from the E. coli genome and the release factor deleted, giving efficient incorporation and partial phage resistance.
Genetic code expansion and recodingThe agency states it will exercise enforcement discretion over investigational-new-drug requirements for transplants used against C. difficile infection unresponsive to standard therapy.
Gut microbiomeLópez-Otín, Blasco, Partridge, Serrano and Kroemer publish 'The Hallmarks of Aging' in Cell, grouping nine processes into primary, antagonistic and integrative tiers.
Hallmarks of agingA thermosensitive TRP channel is shown to mediate lifespan extension at low temperature in C. elegans, indicating a regulated program rather than merely slowed chemistry.
Heat and cold exposureShoukhrat Mitalipov's group derives verified human embryonic stem cell lines by nuclear transfer, using caffeine to stabilise the spindle.
Human cloningSequencing of aged human brain shows mtDNA mutations carry a replication-error signature rather than an oxidative-damage signature.
Mitochondrial dysfunction in agingCommercial pattern-recognition controllers are released; osseointegrated systems with implanted electrodes and nerve stimulation are used long-term outside the laboratory.
Myoelectric prostheticsTian et al. show that naked mole-rat cells secrete an unusually high-molecular-mass hyaluronan, and that removing it makes them susceptible to experimental transformation.
Naked mole-ratA Berkeley group proposes ultrasonically powered sub-millimetre motes as a route to chronic brain-machine interfaces, arguing that electromagnetic power transfer does not scale to that size in tissue.
Neural dust and ultrasonic implantsThe Brain Prize, the Shaw Prize and the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award are given for the development of optogenetics.
OptogeneticsMadeline Lancaster and Jürgen Knoblich use cerebral organoids to model microcephaly, and Takanori Takebe's group generates vascularizable liver buds from iPSCs.
OrganoidsGlaxoSmithKline's shared-antigen immunotherapeutic misses its endpoints in a phase 3 melanoma trial and then in the largest adjuvant lung cancer trial ever run. Both are abandoned.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesRetina Implant AG's Alpha IMS, with roughly 1,500 light-sensitive pixels, receives European approval; the company later ceases operations.
Retinal implants and visual prosthesesThe Singularity Institute becomes the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, dropping the word as its associations became a liability.
SingularitarianismXie and colleagues report expanded interstitial space and increased solute clearance during sleep in mice.
Sleep and longevityA single-author paper in Genome Biology describes a 353-site methylation predictor of chronological age that works across most human tissues.
Steve HorvathAn EU flagship funded at around a billion euros; after an open letter of protest from hundreds of neuroscientists in 2014 it was restructured away from whole-brain simulation and ended having delivered research infrastructure instead.
Whole brain emulationA team encodes 'hola' and 'ciao' in binary, sending them from an EEG subject in India to subjects in France who perceive the bits as phosphenes.
Brain-to-brain interfacesA collaboration is announced with each side committing several hundred million dollars, later expanded, giving Calico a route to clinical development.
Calico Life SciencesAbbott's factory-calibrated, scan-to-read sensor cuts cost and eliminates fingerstick calibration, and drives the first mass adoption outside intensive insulin users.
Continuous glucose monitoringShe moves from UCSF to the aging-research company Google founded the year before, as vice president of aging research.
Cynthia KenyonSuperintelligence applies the principle to AI, arguing that safety and control research should be advanced relative to capability research.
Differential technological developmentPromislow and Kaeberlein begin planning a national study of aging in companion dogs at the University of Washington, initially on university seed money.
Dog Aging ProjectEsvelt, Church and colleagues describe how RNA-guided nucleases would make drives easy to build, and publish the proposal alongside a call for containment standards before anyone builds one.
Gene drivesDassault Systèmes launches a collaborative high-fidelity model of the heart, with the FDA joining as a research partner for device evaluation.
Human digital twinsA woman with neovascular macular degeneration receives a sheet of retinal pigment epithelium grown from her own reprogrammed cells at RIKEN in Japan.
Induced pluripotent stem cellsAcarbose raises median male lifespan 22% but female lifespan only 5%; 17-α-estradiol and NDGA extend lifespan in males only.
Interventions Testing ProgramKL-VS heterozygosity is linked to better cognitive scores in human cohorts, and klotho-overexpressing mice outperform controls on learning and memory tasks.
KlothoThe Restoring Active Memory programme funds two teams to develop closed-loop memory devices, framed around traumatic brain injury in service members.
Memory prosthesisPrize competitions are extended to bioengineered organs and to organ preservation.
Methuselah FoundationRobert Sparrow attacks the political assumptions of the programme, and Harris Wiseman's book argues the neuroscience cannot support anything the proposal requires.
Moral enhancementPeripheral nerve cuffs in amputees and intracortical microstimulation of somatosensory cortex in a participant with spinal cord injury evoke localized tactile percepts.
NeuroprostheticsThe Tibetan EPAS1 high-altitude haplotype is traced to Denisovan introgression, demonstrating that human adaptation to an extreme environment can be genetically specific.
PantropyA rapalog given at low dose for six weeks improves antibody response to influenza vaccination in adults over 65.
RapamycinA Japanese team led by Masayo Takahashi transplants iPSC-derived retinal pigment epithelium into a patient with macular degeneration.
Shinya YamanakaNick Bostrom's Superintelligence recasts the argument in the language of decision theory and policy, and is taken up well outside the movement.
SingularitarianismThe Sc2.0 consortium reports a redesigned, functional yeast chromosome III, stripped of transposons and introns.
Synthetic genomesNick Bostrom's book reframes the discussion around control and alignment, moving it toward mainstream policy attention.
Technological singularityA boy is born in Sweden to a recipient with Müllerian agenesis, delivered preterm by caesarean after she develops pre-eclampsia.
Uterus transplantationDo-it-yourself closed-loop systems built from reverse-engineered pumps reach a substantial user base well ahead of approved equivalents.
Biohacking and grindersMcIntyre and Fahy describe aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation in Cryobiology, combining chemical fixation with vitrification.
Brain preservationNicolelis's group links several rat and several monkey brains into 'brainets' that jointly perform computations or control a virtual arm.
Brain-to-brain interfacesZhu and colleagues identify dasatinib and quercetin as agents that preferentially kill senescent cells by disabling their anti-apoptotic defences.
Cellular senescenceArizona enacts a law, lobbied for by Theranos, letting residents order any laboratory test without a physician's order; a Wall Street Journal investigation later that year reports that the company runs only a small fraction of the tests it offers on its own device.
Consumer blood testingFusions to histone acetyltransferase, DNA methyltransferase and TET demethylase domains demonstrate direct editing of regulatory marks at chosen loci.
Epigenome editingFollistatin gene-transfer products are offered outside clinical trials by companies operating in permissive jurisdictions and taken by self-experimenters, demonstrating that access does not depend on approval.
Gene dopingDrives are demonstrated in fruit flies and then in Anopheles stephensi, the latter carrying anti-parasite effector genes.
Gene drivesEssential proteins are redesigned to require a synthetic amino acid, making the strain dependent on a compound available only in the laboratory.
Genetic code expansion and recodingChinese groups publish the first CRISPR experiments in non-viable human embryos; an international summit in Washington declares clinical germline use irresponsible pending safety and societal consensus.
He Jiankui affairAn analysis of the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease cohort associates frequent sauna bathing with lower cardiovascular and all-cause mortality in middle-aged men.
Heat and cold exposureA controlled study reports that regular post-exercise cold-water immersion reduces long-term muscle hypertrophy and strength adaptation compared with active recovery.
Heat and cold exposureA Chinese group reports editing non-viable tripronuclear zygotes, finding low efficiency, extensive mosaicism, and off-target cuts.
Human germline editingMeeting in Washington, DC, the organising committee calls clinical germline use irresponsible until safety is resolved and there is broad societal consensus.
Human germline editingTwo groups independently derive human primordial germ cell–like cells and identify SOX17 as the key specifier, showing the human pathway differs from the mouse one.
In vitro gametogenesisA second planned transplant is cancelled after genomic changes are found in the prepared cells, and the programme shifts to banked, HLA-matched donor lines.
Induced pluripotent stem cellsParliament approves regulations permitting mitochondrial donation under licence, the first statutory authorisation of heritable modification anywhere.
Mitochondrial replacement therapyBarzilai and colleagues present the TAME design; regulators indicate a composite of age-related events could be acceptable in principle.
Nir BarzilaiReviews of modafinil and of prescription stimulants in healthy people converge on small, task-dependent effects rather than general cognitive gain.
NootropicsMelissa Little's group produces organoids containing nephrons with segmented tubules, along with endothelium and stroma.
OrganoidsThe screw-fixated limb system receives a humanitarian device exemption in the United States, limiting the number of procedures but establishing a legal route.
OsseointegrationTextile-based exosuits and human-in-the-loop optimization of assistance profiles produce the largest measured reductions in the metabolic cost of walking.
Powered exoskeletonsThe Apple Watch ships and Apple releases ResearchKit, putting continuous measurement and study enrolment into a mass-market device rather than a hobbyist one.
Quantified selfLY2495655 increases appendicular lean mass in adults 75 and older but leaves grip strength unchanged, setting the pattern for the pipeline.
SarcopeniaZhu et al. use a transcriptomic screen for anti-apoptotic dependencies to nominate dasatinib and quercetin, and coin the term senolytic.
SenolyticsA tongue-based tactile display for the blind receives United States marketing authorisation, making sensory substitution a cleared medical device category.
Sensory augmentationCohort analyses report that blood reading older than the calendar predicts all-cause mortality, independent of standard risk factors.
Steve HorvathA genome paper reports that a large fraction of tardigrade genes were acquired from bacteria; a competing assembly shows the signal is contamination.
Tardigrade genes and human cellsThe Apple Watch ships with green-light photoplethysmography; Oura's first finger-worn ring reaches backers around the same time.
Wearable health sensorsIzpisua Belmonte's Salk group reports that cyclic, short-duration expression of the factors extends lifespan in a progeria mouse model and improves tissue repair after injury in normal mice.
Altos LabsOhsumi receives the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for elucidating the mechanisms of autophagy.
AutophagyThe prize is awarded for an ASC-preserved rabbit brain whose ultrastructure is verified across the whole organ by electron microscopy.
Brain preservationA Utrecht group implants a wireless electrocorticography system in a person with late-stage ALS, who uses it at home for years to select letters.
Brain–computer interfaceEric Verdin becomes president and expands the institute's work on metabolism, immune aging and translation.
Buck Institute for Research on AgingClearance of p16-positive cells extends median lifespan and improves healthspan in naturally aged mice.
Cellular senescenceThe US agency that certifies clinical laboratories revokes the certificate of Theranos's California facility and bars Elizabeth Holmes from operating a lab for two years. The company voids or corrects large numbers of previously reported results.
Consumer blood testingThe FDA permits the Dexcom G5 to be used for insulin dosing without a confirmatory fingerstick, making the sensor the primary measurement rather than an adjunct. Calibration fingersticks are still required.
Continuous glucose monitoringThe IUCN Species Survival Commission issues guiding principles treating de-extinction products as proxy species, to be judged by conservation benefit rather than by resemblance.
De-extinctionEugenia Kuyda trains a chatbot on text messages from her friend Roman Mazurenko after his death. The Verge reports it at length, and her company later launches the companion app Replika.
Digital immortalityKaeberlein, Creevy, and Promislow lay out the cohort-plus-trial design in Mammalian Genome, framing companion dogs as a translational model for geroscience.
Dog Aging ProjectA fully implanted electrocorticography system in Utrecht lets a woman with late-stage ALS select letters at home, remaining functional over years.
Electrocorticography interfacesOcampo and colleagues extend median lifespan in a progeroid mouse strain using intermittent OSKM induction, and improve injury repair in wild-type mice.
Epigenetic reprogrammingTransient delivery of combined repressor and methyltransferase effectors is shown to produce inheritable silencing of endogenous genes in cultured cells.
Epigenome editingDrives targeting female fertility genes spread efficiently in cages but select for resistant alleles that halt them.
Gene drivesThe LEADER trial reports fewer major cardiovascular events with liraglutide in people with type 2 diabetes at high cardiovascular risk.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsA small sham-controlled trial reports that a single session of whole-body hyperthermia reduces depressive symptoms for several weeks.
Heat and cold exposureFDA guidance sets out how computational modelling studies should be reported in device submissions; ASME publishes V&V 40, grading the credibility a model must show against the decision it informs.
Human digital twinsThe UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority licenses Kathy Niakan's laboratory to edit human embryos for research into early development.
Human germline editingHikabe and colleagues complete the entire female germline cycle in vitro and obtain fertile offspring, at low efficiency.
In vitro gametogenesisMetformin at 0.1% of diet does not significantly extend lifespan in either sex, though combined with rapamycin it does.
Interventions Testing ProgramDong, Milholland and Vijg argue in Nature that the maximum reported age at death plateaued in the mid-1990s and that human lifespan is capped near 115 years.
Maximum human lifespanDirect stimulation of the human hippocampus and entorhinal region during encoding is found to worsen recall in several studies, contradicting earlier reports and establishing that timing and location matter more than dose.
Memory prosthesisA US clinician performs spindle transfer in Mexico for a couple with Leigh syndrome; the FDA later issues a warning letter.
Mitochondrial replacement therapyDelaney et al. describe two tumours in zoo-housed animals, qualifying the claim that the species is cancer-proof.
Naked mole-ratRoughly millimetre-scale motes implanted on the sciatic nerve and gastrocnemius muscle of anaesthetized rats record nerve and muscle activity and report it by ultrasonic backscatter.
Neural dust and ultrasonic implantsRegistered in California by Elon Musk and a group of neuroscientists and engineers; publicly reported in early 2017.
NeuralinkRandomized crossover trials at Johns Hopkins and NYU report substantial reductions in depression and anxiety among patients with life-threatening cancer.
Psychedelic therapySarcopenia receives code M62.84, formal recognition as a reportable condition in the United States.
SarcopeniaClearing p16-positive cells from genetically engineered mice raises median lifespan by roughly a quarter and delays several age-related pathologies.
SenolyticsMagnetic-north implants and sound-to-vibration wristbands reach small commercial markets, moving augmentation outside the laboratory.
Sensory augmentationThe SAVE trial finds no reduction in cardiovascular events from continuous positive airway pressure in adults with both moderate-to-severe apnoea and established cardiovascular disease, with low average adherence.
Sleep and longevityAn endovascular stent-electrode array records cortical activity for months, published in Nature Biotechnology.
StentrodeRecordings from a stent-mounted array in sheep demonstrate that a vessel-borne electrode can pick up cortical signals over months.
SynchronJCVI-syn3.0 is reduced to 473 genes, of which a substantial fraction have no known function.
Synthetic genomesThe Ramazzottius varieornatus genome yields Dsup, which reduces radiation-induced DNA damage when expressed in cultured human cells.
Tardigrade genes and human cellsProgrammes open in more than a dozen countries, robotic donor hysterectomy is introduced to shorten the donor operation, and the United Kingdom reports its first birth in 2025.
Uterus transplantationA Philadelphia team reports eight preterm lambs supported for up to four weeks with normal growth, lung maturation and myelination.
Artificial wombJosiah Zayner injects himself with a CRISPR construct targeting myostatin on stage at a synthetic-biology conference; no effect on muscle is reported and he later describes the act as a mistake.
Biohacking and grindersA Beijing facility runs volunteers through a 370-day sealed experiment with plant and insect production, reporting very high closure.
Closed-loop life supportThe DIAMOND and GOLD trials show HbA1c improvement in type 1 diabetes managed with multiple daily injections rather than pumps. FreeStyle Libre is approved in the US.
Continuous glucose monitoringJournalist James Vlahos builds a conversational agent from an oral history recorded with his dying father, later founding a company offering the service commercially.
Digital immortalityA ten-week randomized pilot in 24 middle-aged dogs reports no serious side effects and improved echocardiographic measures.
Dog Aging ProjectThe once-weekly analogue is approved for type 2 diabetes; an oral tablet formulation follows in 2019.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsRecolonising middle-aged turquoise killifish with young donor microbiota extends life and preserves activity — the first such result outside invertebrates.
Gut microbiomeHe recruits couples in which the father is HIV-positive through a Beijing advocacy organisation, using consent documents framed around AIDS vaccine development.
He Jiankui affairNature publishes several comments attacking the 1995 breakpoint as arbitrary and the statistical treatment of a very small sample as unsound.
Maximum human lifespanPark et al. report that the animals survive 18 minutes of total anoxia by running glycolysis on fructose.
Naked mole-ratA deletion in exon 3 of the growth hormone receptor is associated with longer life in men across several cohorts, and with taller stature.
Nir BarzilaiTwo phase 1 studies published in Nature, one using synthetic peptides and one using RNA, show that vaccines built from an individual's own tumour mutations induce neoantigen-specific T cells in people with melanoma.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesGenomic Prediction, co-founded by physicist Stephen Hsu, begins offering an embryo health score to IVF clinics in the United States.
Polygenic embryo screeningHall, Rosbash and Young share the prize in physiology or medicine for working out the molecular feedback loop of the circadian clock, first in fruit flies.
Sleep and longevityVoretigene neparvovec, an AAV therapy for RPE65-associated retinal dystrophy, becomes the first in vivo gene therapy approved in the United States, at roughly $850,000 for both eyes.
Somatic gene therapyCAHS and related intrinsically disordered proteins are shown to vitrify tardigrade cytoplasm during desiccation, displacing trehalose as the assumed mechanism.
Tardigrade genes and human cellsBaylor University Medical Center in Dallas reports the first birth in the United States; a team in São Paulo reports the first anywhere from a deceased donor.
Uterus transplantationDeepMind's first entry places first among predictors while remaining well short of experimental accuracy.
AI protein designAaron Traywick, who had self-administered an experimental herpes treatment in public, is found dead in a flotation tank; the episode ends the brief vogue for stunt self-dosing.
Biohacking and grindersA pig brain, preserved by the same method and evaluated the same way, wins the second and final tier of the prize.
Brain preservationMIT ends a research subcontract with a startup commercializing the method after coverage highlights that the procedure requires a living patient and is invariably fatal.
Brain preservationCalico researchers publish evidence that naked mole-rat mortality risk does not rise measurably with age, an unusual departure from the Gompertz pattern.
Calico Life SciencesWorking with Ancestry.com pedigree data, Calico scientists argue that published estimates of the heritability of human lifespan are inflated by assortative mating.
Calico Life SciencesFlood-filling networks push automated neurite tracing to error rates low enough that reconstruction of large volumes becomes practical.
ConnectomicsThe Dexcom G6 is authorized as an integrated CGM, a device category built so that sensors, pumps, and algorithms from different manufacturers can be combined.
Continuous glucose monitoringStimulation of the anterior nucleus of the thalamus is approved in the United States for drug-resistant focal epilepsy.
Deep brain stimulationThrombin-loaded origami tubes triggered by tumour vasculature markers induce clotting in tumour vessels and slow growth in mouse models.
DNA nanotechnologyThe National Institute on Aging awards five-year funding, ultimately roughly $29 million in federal support.
Dog Aging ProjectA Canadian group synthesised horsepox virus, a relative of smallpox, from commercially ordered DNA at modest cost, reopening the question of whether smallpox could be reconstructed.
Dual-use research of concernA Canadian group synthesises horsepox virus, a relative of smallpox, from chemically synthesised DNA fragments at modest cost.
Engineered pandemicsA drive targeting an ultraconserved region of the doublesex gene collapses caged populations within a small number of generations without generating functional resistance.
Gene drivesOnline videos and a news exclusive reveal that twin girls have been born from embryos edited at the CCR5 locus.
He Jiankui affairHe presents the work at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing and discloses a second pregnancy. The organising committee condemns the experiment.
He Jiankui affairA Shanghai team produces two long-tailed macaques from fetal fibroblasts, aided by a histone demethylase and a deacetylase inhibitor to relieve epigenetic barriers.
Human cloningFDA researchers replicate a breast-imaging comparison end to end on synthetic anatomy, with simulated detectors and algorithmic readers.
Human digital twinsThe birth of twin girls with edited CCR5 genes is announced in Shenzhen days before the Second Summit convenes in Hong Kong.
Human germline editingHuman germ cell–like cells are matured to oogonia inside xenogeneic reconstituted ovaries built with mouse gonadal somatic cells, then stop short of meiosis.
In vitro gametogenesisBarbi and colleagues report in Science that mortality hazard in Italian cohorts flattens after about age 105, implying no hard wall at 115.
Maximum human lifespanSaul Newman argues that late-life mortality plateaus can be generated entirely by age-reporting error, without any biological deceleration.
Maximum human lifespanTwo groups report memory improvements in epilepsy patients: one using a hippocampal encoding model, the other using a decoded brain-state trigger for lateral temporal cortex stimulation.
Memory prosthesisThe Court of Appeal of England and Wales holds in R v BM that a customer's consent does not make lawful serious body modification performed by a non-medical practitioner.
Morphological freedomRuby, Smith and Buffenstein analyse 3,329 colony records and find no detectable rise in hazard with age.
Naked mole-ratA millimetre-scale ultrasonically powered stimulator with bidirectional communication delivers current to peripheral nerve, showing the link can carry commands as well as data.
Neural dust and ultrasonic implantsTargeted epidural stimulation restores stepping after spinal cord injury; a 2023 system links a cortical implant to a spinal stimulator to give volitional control of walking.
NeuroprostheticsA convened workgroup publishes which blood-based measures a geroscience trial should collect, building infrastructure a future application would need.
Nir BarzilaiAn inventory of accessible Martian carbon dioxide concludes there is not nearly enough to thicken the atmosphere with foreseeable technology.
PantropyTreated patients are compared with a matched contemporaneous untreated cohort and show lower mortality.
ProgeriaStrava's global activity heatmap is found to expose the layout of overseas military sites, and John Hancock announces it will sell only interactive life insurance, attaching a tracking-based wellness programme to new policies.
Quantified selfTransplanting a small number of senescent cells into young mice causes persistent physical dysfunction, which senolytic treatment partially reverses.
SenolyticsDNAm PhenoAge, trained on clinical laboratory measures rather than on age alone, is published by Morgan Levine with Horvath and colleagues.
Steve HorvathRecon3D assembles a genome-scale account of human metabolic reactions with associated protein structures, extending an effort begun a decade earlier.
Virtual cell modelsUS regulators authorize an electrocardiogram app and an irregular rhythm notification on a general-purpose smartwatch through the De Novo pathway.
Wearable health sensorsA Munich group reports baboons surviving for months on life-supporting pig hearts using non-ischaemic preservation and blood-pressure control, establishing that the model can work.
XenotransplantationZolgensma is approved for spinal muscular atrophy, delivering AAV9 intravenously at doses orders of magnitude above earlier local injections.
AAV vectorsInsilico Medicine reports designing DDR1 kinase inhibitors with a generative model and validating them in mice within weeks.
AI drug discoveryThe EVE platform in Australia and Japan and a European perinatal life support consortium pursue related designs; CHOP's work is commercialised through Vitara Biomedical.
Artificial wombCalifornia requires gene-therapy kits sold to consumers to carry a notice that they are not for self-administration, following a federal warning that such sales are unlawful.
Biohacking and grindersThree people collaborate on a Tetris-like task, two sending rotate-or-not decisions by EEG and the third receiving them as phosphenes, with accuracy around 80 percent.
Brain-to-brain interfacesVictoria Gray in the United States and a beta thalassaemia patient in Germany receive edited cells in the CLIMB trials.
CasgevyQuest and Labcorp launch consumer-facing platforms selling much of their own catalogue without a physician visit.
Consumer blood testingIn more than 25,000 older US adults, neither vitamin D nor marine omega-3 reduces invasive cancer or major cardiovascular events.
Dietary supplementsBostrom formalises the case that some possible inventions are 'black balls' civilisation has no default defence against, and examines what stabilisation would require.
Differential technological developmentNationwide enrollment launches in November; owner nominations surge past the initial 10,000-dog goal within a week.
Dog Aging ProjectA French team reports a tetraplegic participant operating a whole-body exoskeleton using bilateral wireless epidural implants.
Electrocorticography interfacesSuccessive reports from UCSF decode sentences, then conversational-rate text, synthesized voice, and near-real-time streaming speech from surface arrays over speech motor cortex.
Electrocorticography interfacesA fully synthetic 4-megabase E. coli genome removes two serine codons and the amber codon; deleting the corresponding tRNAs yields broad resistance to bacteriophages.
Genetic code expansion and recodingThe FDA warns that two immunocompromised recipients developed invasive drug-resistant E. coli infections traced to one donor, whose stool had not been screened for such organisms. One of the two died.
Gut microbiomeA Guangdong provincial inquiry concludes that he evaded supervision and used forged ethical review documents.
He Jiankui affairA Shenzhen district court sentences He to three years' imprisonment and a fine for illegal medical practice.
He Jiankui affairCeline Halioua incorporates Cellular Longevity, Inc., trading as Loyal, to develop drugs for canine aging.
LoyalBody integrity dysphoria enters the World Health Organization's ICD-11, giving a clinical name to the desire for elective disability and complicating the autonomy argument.
Morphological freedomA launch event and accompanying white paper describe polymer electrode threads, robotic insertion, and rodent recordings.
NeuralinkAnalyses of commercial cognitive-enhancement supplements find unapproved drugs present, sometimes at doses exceeding pharmaceutical ranges, and regulators issue warning letters.
NootropicsEmbedded collagen printing produces heart components; tomographic light projection prints centimetre-scale objects in seconds; entangled multivascular networks are printed in a single monolithic gel.
Organ bioprintingModerna and Merck begin a randomised phase 2b of mRNA-4157 plus pembrolizumab against pembrolizumab alone in resected stage IIIB–IV melanoma.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesKaravani and colleagues model the expected gain from selecting the top-scoring embryo and conclude it is small for both height and cognitive scores.
Polygenic embryo screeningThe US special operations powered-armour programme ends without a fielded suit, and several full-body industrial exoskeleton efforts are scaled back, while passive industrial exosuits find a durable market.
Powered exoskeletonsAnzalone and colleagues report search-and-replace editing without double-strand breaks or donor DNA, demonstrating all twelve base substitutions and small insertions and deletions in human cells.
Prime editingThe FDA approves esketamine nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression, restricted to certified clinics under a risk-management programme.
Psychedelic therapyTwo randomised evaluations of workplace wellness programmes report little or no effect on clinical measures, medical spending or employment outcomes.
Quantified selfresTORbio's RTB101 does not reduce clinically symptomatic respiratory illness in older adults, ending the most advanced attempt to license an mTOR inhibitor for an aging-related indication.
RapamycinSecond Sight halts Argus II production and nearly winds down; Retina Implant AG closes. Implanted patients lose software support and repair paths.
Retinal implants and visual prosthesesThe revised consensus makes low strength the primary criterion, demoting muscle quantity to confirmation.
SarcopeniaOpen-label studies in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and diabetic kidney disease report feasibility and, in the kidney study, a measurable drop in senescent-cell burden in adipose tissue.
SenolyticsA single intravenous AAV9 dose for spinal muscular atrophy is approved at about $2.1 million, resetting expectations for what a one-time medicine can cost.
Somatic gene therapyFour participants with severe paralysis receive implants in Australia; the trial reports no device-related serious adverse events.
StentrodeA clock built from methylation surrogates for plasma proteins and smoking history, regressed on time to death.
Steve HorvathFour Australian patients with severe paralysis receive the device; the trial reports vessel patency and usable control signals at twelve months.
SynchronA 4-megabase E. coli genome is rebuilt with three codons removed, and the corresponding transfer RNAs and release factor deleted.
Synthetic genomesDsup is shown to bind nucleosomes and protect chromatin from hydroxyl radicals, making it a shield rather than a repair factor.
Tardigrade genes and human cellsA single-arm study of roughly 419,000 participants reports how often the notification fires and how often a mailed ECG patch confirms it.
Wearable health sensorsDeaths from acute liver failure and thrombotic microangiopathy in high-dose systemic trials, including for X-linked myotubular myopathy and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, force reassessment of dose ceilings.
AAV vectorsDSP-1181, from Exscientia and Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, enters a phase 1 trial in Japan for obsessive-compulsive disorder. It was later discontinued.
AI drug discoveryThe Collins laboratory identifies halicin using a graph neural network, the first widely cited antibiotic hit attributed to deep learning.
AI drug discoveryAlphaFold2 predicts most single-chain targets at near-experimental accuracy, and the assessors describe the problem as largely solved for such targets.
AI protein designAn eIF2B activator developed with AbbVie enters trials in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and a rare leukodystrophy, becoming the partnership's most advanced asset.
Calico Life SciencesApproved implantation ages drop below one year for some devices, and gene therapies for specific genetic deafness enter first-in-human trials.
Cochlear implantA Janelia Research Campus team releases a dense reconstruction of about 25,000 neurons in the central brain of Drosophila, with synaptic connectivity.
ConnectomicsEmergency authorizations for at-home sample collection, including one granted to Everlywell, make mail-in specimen kits a familiar consumer product.
Consumer blood testingCharpentier and Doudna share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of a method for genome editing.
CRISPR–Cas9Companies pivot toward externally perfused humanized pig livers as temporary support, a use that requires far less than a transplantable organ.
Decellularized scaffoldsPulse generators capable of recording local field potentials reach the market, and the first commercial closed-loop systems that adjust stimulation to beta-band activity are cleared in Europe and the United States in 2025.
Deep brain stimulationLu and colleagues deliver OSK by AAV to retinal ganglion cells and recover visual function after optic nerve injury and in aged animals.
Epigenetic reprogrammingFinnish sauna culture is added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as sauna and cold plunging spread through commercial fitness elsewhere.
Heat and cold exposureA black-footed ferret and a Przewalski's horse are cloned from decades-old frozen cell lines to restore lost genetic diversity.
Human cloningAn international commission convened by the US National Academies and the Royal Society defines preconditions and a narrow set of possible first uses.
Human germline editingConception Biosciences, Gameto and others begin funding human work; none has reported a mature human gamete.
In vitro gametogenesisThe SGLT2 inhibitor raises median male lifespan 14% with no significant effect in females, despite similar glucose lowering in both sexes.
Interventions Testing ProgramWork continues in acute monitoring settings and in modelling; no implantable memory prosthesis has entered a clinical trial as a permanent device.
Memory prosthesisMagnetoelectric films are used to power millimetre-scale stimulators, and companies begin first-in-human studies of pea-sized wireless stimulators for psychiatric indications.
Neural dust and ultrasonic implantsA livestream shows live neural recordings from an implanted pig, demonstrating a sealed wireless device rather than any new decoding capability.
NeuralinkMultiple companies run early feasibility studies of implanted interfaces, and adaptive sensing-and-stimulating devices reach the market for movement disorders.
NeuroprostheticsA trade book arguing that aging is the shared upstream cause of the diseases of old age.
Nir BarzilaiSelf-contained arm prostheses combine skeletal attachment with implanted electrodes for muscle recording and nerve stimulation, used at home over years.
OsseointegrationA child selected using a polygenic score is publicly reported, and a group of behaviour geneticists and statisticians set out the problems with the practice in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Polygenic embryo screeningThe FDA approves Zokinvy in November, the first approved treatment for the disease.
ProgeriaWolf and Martijn de Groot publish a framework recasting the practice as personal science, an attempt to define the method independently of the movement.
Quantified selfA Utah array in the visual cortex of a blind volunteer supports letter identification, and a 1,024-channel array in monkey V1 evokes recognizable shapes.
Retinal implants and visual prosthesesUnity Biotechnology's UBX0101, injected into osteoarthritic knees, performs no better than placebo in a phase 2 trial.
SenolyticsAmor and colleagues engineer T cells against the surface protein uPAR, showing that senescent cells can be cleared immunologically rather than pharmacologically.
SenolyticsEmpirical relationships between compute, data and loss give AI capability forecasting a quantitative footing it previously lacked.
Technological singularityKriegman, Blackiston, Levin and Bongard report simulated designs built from Xenopus laevis skin and cardiac progenitor cells that move, push objects, and heal after being cut.
XenobotsA smaller group of finalists is to run the year-long intervention trials against which the grand prize will be judged.
XPRIZE HealthspanPredicted structures for most of the human proteome are made public, changing what structure-based design can be attempted.
AI drug discoveryInsilico's ISM001-055, a TNIK inhibitor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, enters first-in-human testing after both target and compound were nominated computationally.
AI drug discoveryAlphaFold2 is published with its code released; the Baker laboratory publishes RoseTTAFold, a smaller three-track network, within weeks.
AI protein designReports emerge of a well-funded new company recruiting senior reprogramming and aging researchers under confidentiality.
Altos LabsThe FDA grants accelerated approval over its advisory committee's objection; Biogen discontinues the drug in early 2024 after minimal uptake.
Alzheimer's diseaseUCSF, Stanford, and UC Davis teams decode attempted speech at conversational rates from motor cortex, with large vocabularies and single-digit word error rates in the best case.
Brain–computer interfaceThe New England Journal of Medicine reports elimination of vaso-occlusive crises and transfusion independence in the first treated patients.
CasgevyThe MOXIE instrument on Perseverance produces oxygen from atmospheric carbon dioxide by solid-oxide electrolysis, demonstrating in-situ resource use at gram scale.
Closed-loop life supportBen Lamm and George Church launch the company with the woolly mammoth as its flagship target and a stated goal of calves before the end of the decade.
Colossal BiosciencesBen Lamm and George Church start a company to pursue mammoth, and later thylacine and dodo, with venture funding on a scale the field had not previously seen.
De-extinctionA man's use of a GPT-3-based service to simulate his deceased fiancée is reported in detail, prompting debate about consent and the emotional effects of such systems.
Digital immortalityReporting on a Microsoft patent covering conversational agents modelled on a specific person from their social data prompts public debate; the company says it has no plans to build the product.
Digital immortalityA single fusion protein is shown to install durable, reversible transcriptional silencing at a large fraction of the genome's promoters.
Epigenome editingThe same drive suppresses larger, more ecologically structured indoor cage populations, the closest existing approximation to field conditions.
Gene drivesSTEP 1 reports roughly 15 percent mean weight loss over 68 weeks and semaglutide is approved for weight management; demand outstrips manufacturing capacity for the next several years.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsGems and de Magalhães argue the framework repackages damage-maintenance thinking and does not distinguish cause from consequence.
Hallmarks of agingChina creates a specific offence covering implantation of gene-edited or cloned embryos into humans or animals.
He Jiankui affairThe WHO publishes a governance framework and recommendations for genome editing; following a 2020 report of chromosome loss, another group reports frequent loss of heterozygosity in edited human embryos.
Human germline editingThe NAD+ precursor does not affect lifespan in either sex; 17-α-estradiol works in males even when started at 20 months.
Interventions Testing ProgramThe company builds its first programmes around reducing IGF-1 in large breeds, on the reasoning that breeding for size raised the hormone and shortened their lives.
LoyalExtreme-value analyses find the data consistent with an exponential tail and no identifiable finite cap within the observable range, while resilience-based modelling suggests an outer bound somewhere past 120.
Maximum human lifespanA team from Wake Forest wins the NASA competition run in partnership with the foundation, producing thick vascularized tissue that survives for a month.
Methuselah FoundationChile amends its constitution to protect brain activity and mental integrity, the first national provision aimed at the mind rather than the body.
Morphological freedomAttention shifts from muscle disease to preserving muscle during rapid weight loss on incretin drugs, and to a pro-myostatin antibody in spinal muscular atrophy that reports a positive phase 3 result.
Myostatin inhibitionA separate approach demonstrates dozens of sub-millimetre radio-frequency-powered chiplets recording from rodent cortex as a coordinated network, without ultrasound.
Neural dust and ultrasonic implantsA monkey plays a cursor-based video game using the implant, replicating a capability shown in primate laboratories years earlier.
NeuralinkBrian Armstrong and Blake Byers commit $105 million to a company built around transcription-factor screening, with Jacob Kimmel leading research.
NewLimitA patient with retinitis pigmentosa recovers partial visual function after retinal ganglion cells are made light-sensitive and driven by image-projecting goggles.
OptogeneticsChristopher Mason's The Next 500 Years makes an explicit case that engineering humans for other worlds is not merely permissible but obligatory.
PantropyTransient suppression of mismatch repair substantially raises editing efficiency, defining the PE4 and PE5 systems.
Prime editingA single injection of an AAV-delivered adenine base editor roughly doubles the median lifespan of mice carrying the human mutation.
ProgeriaPsilocybin fails to beat escitalopram on the primary outcome of a head-to-head depression trial, while MAPS reports a positive phase 3 of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD.
Psychedelic therapyRetro Biosciences is established in the Bay Area with three programme areas and a stated ten-year healthspan goal.
Retro BiosciencesAllegations of misconduct lead to de Grey being placed on leave and then removed; he denies wrongdoing and later founds the LEV Foundation.
SENS Research FoundationThe FDA grants an investigational device exemption, permitting the first US implants.
SynchronImplanted monitors roughly triple atrial fibrillation diagnoses in older adults at risk without a statistically significant reduction in stroke.
Wearable health sensorsBlackiston and colleagues report constructs that self-organize from skin cells alone and swim on their own cilia, removing the microsurgery step.
XenobotsParent constructs are shown to sweep loose stem cells into piles that mature into a further generation of swimmers, in a dish continuously supplied with fresh cells.
XenobotsTeams at NYU and Alabama transplant pig kidneys into brain-dead recipients maintained on ventilators, one for 61 days, to study early function without risk to a patient.
XenotransplantationThe AlphaFold Protein Structure Database expands to over 200 million predicted structures, and ProteinMPNN makes sequence design routine.
AI protein designAltos Labs announces itself with about $3 billion committed, three research institutes, and a leadership drawn from large-pharma R&D.
Altos LabsThe company's laboratories publish on reprogramming mechanism, cell identity and epigenetic ageing; no clinical programme is announced.
Altos LabsA second programme targets the thylacine, using the fat-tailed dunnart as the host species, with a laboratory at the University of Melbourne.
Colossal BiosciencesHolmes is convicted in January on four counts of defrauding investors, acquitted on the counts relating to patients, and sentenced later that year to more than eleven years.
Consumer blood testingThe US Preventive Services Task Force finds the evidence insufficient for multivitamins and recommends against beta-carotene and vitamin E for preventing cancer or cardiovascular disease.
Dietary supplementsCreevy et al. describe the open-science cohort design in Nature, with tens of thousands of dogs already enrolled.
Dog Aging ProjectAnonymous accounts on X begin using 'e/acc' as a self-description, framed against effective altruism and AI-safety advocacy.
Effective accelerationismAltos Labs launches with about $3 billion in committed funding and a research programme centred on reprogramming; NewLimit and others pursue narrower transcription-factor screens.
Epigenetic reprogrammingTirzepatide, targeting both the GIP and GLP-1 receptors, is approved for type 2 diabetes; SURMOUNT-1 reports mean weight loss around a fifth of body weight at the highest dose.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsRebyota, a donor-derived enema, and Vowst, an oral spore preparation, are approved in the US to prevent recurrence of C. difficile infection.
Gut microbiomeA Copenhagen meeting summary proposes further candidates including compromised autophagy, altered mechanical properties and splicing dysregulation.
Hallmarks of agingHe is released from prison and resumes public activity, announcing further research projects.
He Jiankui affairThe FDA Modernization Act 2.0 removes the blanket statutory requirement that new drugs be tested in animals and names computer modelling among acceptable alternatives.
Human digital twinsAfter leaving the SENS Research Foundation, de Grey founds an organization named for the concept and begins combination-intervention studies in middle-aged mice.
Longevity escape velocityMaeve's Law permits mitochondrial donation in a staged research and clinical pathway.
Mitochondrial replacement therapyCagan et al. place the species near the slow end of a cross-species scaling between mutation rate and lifespan.
Naked mole-ratThe company focuses on combinatorial delivery, single-cell readouts and functional assays in primary human hepatocytes and T cells rather than on a named indication.
NewLimit3DBio Therapeutics implants an ear reconstructed from a patient's own chondrocytes in a microtia clinical trial, the first bioprinted living implant placed in a person under regulatory oversight.
Organ bioprintingHuman cortical organoids transplanted into the somatosensory cortex of newborn rats grow, receive sensory input and can influence the animals' behaviour.
OrganoidsA joint statement from European genetics and reproductive medicine societies calls the practice unproven and unethical.
Polygenic embryo screeningStructured RNA motifs added to the pegRNA 3' end protect it from degradation, and paired-pegRNA designs enable larger replacements and integrase-mediated insertions.
Prime editingThe COMMAND early feasibility study begins at Mount Sinai under an FDA investigational device exemption.
StentrodeHorvath joins Altos Labs, taking the measurement problem into a company built around epigenetic rejuvenation.
Steve HorvathA small US early feasibility study across several centres reports acceptable safety and functional digital control.
SynchronA whole-cell kinetic model of the 493-gene synthetic bacterium JCVI-syn3A reproduces how the cell balances metabolism, gene expression and growth across a cycle.
Virtual cell modelsThe Fitbit Heart Study is published, and the US Preventive Services Task Force finds the evidence insufficient to recommend for or against screening asymptomatic adults for atrial fibrillation.
Wearable health sensorsTwo pig hearts and several pig kidneys are transplanted under compassionate-use rules, with survival measured in weeks to months, and US regulators clear the first formal kidney trials in 2025.
XenotransplantationRFdiffusion generates protein backbones to order, including binders against chosen targets and scaffolds for catalytic sites.
AI protein designCLARITY AD reports a 27% slowing of decline over 18 months, the first clearly positive phase 3 result for an anti-amyloid antibody.
Alzheimer's diseaseThe US Food and Drug Administration convenes its Pediatric Advisory Committee to discuss what evidence a first-in-human trial would require.
Artificial wombA Lausanne team restores volitional walking in a man with spinal cord injury by linking a cortical implant to an epidural spinal stimulator.
Brain–computer interfaceReports describe the collaboration being scaled back in scope as programmes are prioritized, with Calico's focus adjusting accordingly.
Calico Life SciencesThe UK MHRA authorises the therapy in November; the FDA follows in December for sickle cell disease, and in January 2024 for beta thalassaemia.
CasgevyA bird programme is announced, requiring primordial germ cell techniques that do not yet work in pigeons.
Colossal BiosciencesWinding and colleagues publish the complete synaptic connectome of a Drosophila larva, roughly 3,000 neurons — the first whole brain of an insect.
ConnectomicsMembership services selling a hundred or more analytes a year, framed around biological aging rather than disease, become a prominent part of the market.
Consumer blood testingA Minnesota group reports vitrified rat kidneys rewarmed by inductive heating of infused magnetic nanoparticles, then transplanted, restoring life-sustaining function.
CryonicsVitalik Buterin proposes d/acc, framing the goal as accelerating defensive and decentralising technologies specifically rather than technology in general.
Differential technological developmentUS federal policy directs a framework for screening synthetic nucleic acid orders, an example of a defensive capability being deliberately advanced ahead of misuse.
Differential technological developmentThe NIA declines to renew the project's core grant, a decision reported by Science in late 2023 and protested by researchers and dog owners.
Dog Aging ProjectMarc Andreessen publishes 'The Techno-Optimist Manifesto', which names risk management and tech ethics among its enemies and is widely read as an e/acc-adjacent document.
Effective accelerationismForbes reports that the movement's most visible account belongs to Guillaume Verdon, a former Google physicist and founder of the hardware startup Extropic.
Effective accelerationismThe vocabulary spreads into venture capital and AI-company hiring, and 'e/acc' appears in professional profiles as a political signal.
Effective accelerationismEpidural cortical implants drive a spinal stimulator to restore volitional walking after spinal cord injury.
Electrocorticography interfacesReassigning freed codons to new meanings is shown to block viral propagation and to prevent engineered genes from functioning if transferred to natural organisms.
Genetic code expansion and recodingSELECT reports fewer major adverse cardiovascular events with semaglutide in adults with overweight or obesity and established cardiovascular disease but no diabetes; tirzepatide is approved for obesity.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsThe revised hallmarks of aging add dysbiosis as one of twelve. It is the least settled entry on the list, and the only one whose causal contribution rests almost entirely on germ-free and gnotobiotic mice.
Gut microbiomeThe original authors add disabled macroautophagy, chronic inflammation and dysbiosis, and emphasize the interconnection of the hallmarks.
Hallmarks of agingDigital twin becomes standard vocabulary in hospital and device software while validated clinical uses stay confined to a handful of organ-scale models.
Human digital twinsMeeting in London, the summit concludes that heritable editing remains unacceptable and turns much of its attention to the unequal reach of somatic therapies.
Human germline editingHayashi's group reports functional oocytes derived from male mouse cells, involving loss of the Y and duplication of the X, with pups born from bipaternal embryos.
In vitro gametogenesisA single low dose of rhesus klotho protein improves memory performance in aged rhesus monkeys; a high dose does not.
KlothoFDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine concludes that Loyal's data meet the reasonable expectation of effectiveness standard for a lifespan indication in large dogs — one requirement of a conditional approval, not an approval.
LoyalA randomized, placebo-controlled trial of LOY-002 in senior dogs recruits through veterinary clinics across the United States, powered on how long the enrolled animals live.
LoyalZhang et al. report that mice carrying the naked mole-rat hyaluronan synthase gene develop fewer tumours and live modestly longer.
Naked mole-ratThe FDA grants an investigational device exemption; the PRIME study opens recruitment for people with quadriplegia.
NeuralinkBioprinted tissue moves into drug screening and into partnerships with pharmaceutical firms for implantable therapeutic tissues; no solid organ reaches the clinic.
Organ bioprintingIn February the FDA grants the combination breakthrough therapy designation for adjuvant high-risk melanoma, on phase 2b data showing a 44% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesA phase 1 study of BioNTech's autogene cevumeran in 16 patients with resected pancreatic cancer reports vaccine-expanded T cells in half of them, and longer recurrence-free survival in those who responded.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesEvolved reverse transcriptases shrink the construct, and fusion of an RNA-binding protein that recognises the pegRNA improves performance across cell types.
Prime editingThe Therapeutic Goods Administration permits authorised psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, the first such national framework.
Psychedelic therapyMIT Technology Review reports Sam Altman's $180 million personal investment, at the time the company's entire capital.
Retro BiosciencesThe UK authorises exagamglogene autotemcel for both sickle cell disease and beta thalassaemia in November; the US follows for sickle cell disease in December, alongside the lentiviral therapy Lyfgenia.
Somatic gene therapySynchron demonstrates control of commercial voice assistants and announces work with major computing platforms on native input support for neural devices.
StentrodeThe Mammalian Methylation Consortium reports clocks built on conserved CpG sites that estimate age across dozens of species.
Steve HorvathAll sixteen synthetic yeast chromosomes are reported, along with a designed neochromosome carrying relocated transfer RNA genes.
Synthetic genomesAttention shifts to whether models can meaningfully contribute to AI research itself, the step the mechanism argument requires.
Technological singularityGeneformer and scGPT are trained on tens of millions of transcriptomes and released, moving the field's centre of gravity from equations to learned representations.
Virtual cell modelsGumuskaya and colleagues in Levin's laboratory report motile spheroids that self-assemble from adult human tracheal epithelial cells.
XenobotsXPRIZE announces a $101 million, seven-year competition with Hevolution Foundation and Chip Wilson as principal funders.
XPRIZE HealthspanExscientia and Recursion merge, combining two of the largest AI-first drug discovery companies after neither had produced an approved medicine.
AI drug discoveryAlphaFold3 extends prediction to biomolecular complexes; the Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes half to David Baker for computational protein design and half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for structure prediction.
AI protein designNature retracts the 2006 Aβ*56 paper for doctored images; donanemab is approved in the US; the Lancet Commission names 14 modifiable risk factors.
Alzheimer's diseaseA titanium rotary total artificial heart with a single levitated rotor is implanted in its first patients, one of whom is supported for more than a hundred days before transplant.
Artificial heartNeuralink, Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, Paradromics, and several Chinese groups run early feasibility studies; none has regulatory approval for routine use.
Brain–computer interfaceEuropean and UK health-technology bodies negotiate managed-access arrangements; uptake remains slow and confined to authorised transplant centres.
CasgevyShapson-Coe, Lichtman, Jain and colleagues release H01, a cubic millimetre of human temporal cortex containing tens of thousands of cells and around 150 million synapses in about 1.4 petabytes of imagery.
ConnectomicsThe FlyWire consortium publishes the wiring diagram of an entire adult fruit fly brain, roughly 140,000 neurons, together with cell-type annotation.
ConnectomicsThe FDA clears Dexcom's Stelo and then Abbott's Lingo for sale without a prescription to adults who do not use insulin.
Continuous glucose monitoringResearchers publish design frameworks for 'deadbots', proposing consent requirements, dignity constraints, and exit procedures for the digital afterlife industry.
Digital immortalityWith federal funding expiring in June, the founders establish the Dog Aging Institute, a 501(c)(3), and set out to raise $40–50 million.
Dog Aging ProjectCompanies state intentions to file for first-in-human trials of OSK gene therapy in eye disease. As of mid-2026 no partial-reprogramming therapy has published clinical efficacy data.
Epigenetic reprogrammingA single in vivo dose targeting a cholesterol-regulating gene produces silencing lasting many months in mice.
Epigenome editingEpigenetic silencing candidates for chronic hepatitis B and for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy are reported dosed in early-phase trials.
Epigenome editingThe FLOW trial, halted early for efficacy the previous year, reports slower kidney-disease progression with semaglutide in type 2 diabetes. Labels expand toward cardiovascular risk reduction and, for tirzepatide, obstructive sleep apnoea.
GLP-1 receptor agonistsNatasha Vita-More steps down as executive director and becomes president emeritus; Edward Hudgins takes over, and the board announces a reassessment of the organization's mission.
Humanity+Small trials report transplants of iPSC-derived corneal epithelium, dopaminergic progenitors for Parkinson's disease, and reprogrammed-cell-derived islets in type 1 diabetes.
Induced pluripotent stem cellsTwo new male-only extensions are reported, while the senolytic fisetin and four other agents show no effect at the doses used.
Interventions Testing ProgramOlshansky and colleagues report in Nature Aging that life-expectancy gains in the world's longest-lived populations decelerated after 1990.
Longevity escape velocityAmputees with surgically reconstructed agonist-antagonist muscle pairs achieve near-normal walking biomechanics under continuous neural control of a powered ankle.
Myoelectric prostheticsThe first participant receives the device in January; the company later discloses that many threads retracted from the cortex, and modifies its technique for subsequent surgeries.
NeuralinkRegulators in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates permit studies; the company reports additional participants and a robotic-arm extension study.
NeuralinkNewLimit publishes screening results and methodology openly, an unusual posture for a private longevity company.
NewLimitWeber and colleagues report KEYNOTE-942 in The Lancet: 18-month recurrence-free survival of 79% with the combination against 62% with pembrolizumab alone, in 157 patients.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesJournalistic investigations document companies offering embryo ranking on cognitive traits, and at least one firm markets such ranking openly, drawing broad criticism from geneticists.
Polygenic embryo screeningAn advisory committee votes against MDMA-assisted therapy on both effectiveness and benefit–risk, and the agency asks Lykos Therapeutics, the renamed MAPS corporate arm, for an additional phase 3 trial.
Psychedelic therapyThe PEARL trial of intermittent rapamycin in healthy adults reports tolerability and scattered secondary signals, without a clinical benefit.
RapamycinPixium Vision enters receivership and its PRIMA subretinal system is acquired by Science Corporation; trial results reported in 2025 describe letter and word reading with electronic zoom in most implanted participants.
Retinal implants and visual prosthesesThe Global Leadership Initiative in Sarcopenia publishes a Delphi consensus intended to reconcile the competing regional definitions.
SarcopeniaA controlled trial of intermittent dasatinib plus quercetin in postmenopausal women does not meet its primary bone-turnover endpoint.
SenolyticsSENS Research Foundation and the advocacy organization Lifespan.io combine to form the Lifespan Research Institute, which keeps a research and education centre in Mountain View.
SENS Research FoundationA study in mice reports reduced rather than increased brain clearance during sleep and anaesthesia, leaving the mechanism unsettled.
Sleep and longevityImetelstat, which targets the telomerase RNA template, is approved in the United States for anaemia in lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes.
Telomeres and telomeraseA 42-author perspective in Cell sets out what an AI Virtual Cell would have to be: universal representations across scales, queried through virtual instruments, judged against experiment.
Virtual cell modelsThe FDA warns against devices claiming non-invasive blood glucose measurement; sleep apnea notification features are authorized for Samsung and Apple watches.
Wearable health sensorsThe FlyWire consortium publishes the complete synaptic connectome of an adult fruit fly, roughly 140,000 neurons — the first whole brain of an animal with complex behaviour to be reconstructed.
Whole brain emulationSeveral hundred teams from dozens of countries register, spanning drug repurposing, exercise and nutrition protocols, cell therapies and devices.
XPRIZE HealthspanThe FDA clears the first blood test for Alzheimer's pathology, a plasma p-tau217 to amyloid-β ratio, for symptomatic adults 55 and over.
Alzheimer's diseaseMice edited with several mammoth-associated coat and metabolism variants are announced as a demonstration of multiplex editing in a live animal.
Colossal BiosciencesThree grey wolf pups carrying, on the company's account, about twenty edits at fourteen genes are presented as de-extincted dire wolves, drawing immediate and widespread scientific objection.
Colossal BiosciencesThe company announces work on the giant moa in partnership with New Zealand interests, extending the bird programme.
Colossal BiosciencesA cubic millimetre of mouse visual cortex is published with structural reconstruction co-registered to prior functional imaging of the same neurons.
ConnectomicsColossal publicises mice edited for cold-adapted coat and metabolic traits and three grey wolves carrying, on the company's account, about twenty edits at fourteen genes and described as dire wolves; taxonomists and conservation biologists reject the second characterisation.
De-extinctionA $7 million NIH grant to Texas A&M expands the rapamycin trial from about 170 dogs toward a target of 580 across multiple sites, scheduled to run to late 2029.
Dog Aging ProjectAn executive order halts federally funded research that would make a pathogen more transmissible or harder to counter, superseding the previous year's oversight policy.
Engineered pandemicsReports of privately funded US companies pursuing heritable editing prompt professional societies to call jointly for an extended moratorium on clinical use.
Human germline editingA plasmid klotho gene therapy and an alpha-klotho mRNA candidate are registered as phase 1 studies. Neither has posted results.
KlothoThe agency reaches the same reasonable-expectation conclusion for LOY-002, the programme the company expects to reach the market first.
LoyalThe Newcastle programme publishes outcomes for a small number of children born after pronuclear transfer, with low but not always undetectable mitochondrial carryover.
Mitochondrial replacement therapyA venture round reported at roughly $130 million extends the platform and moves the company toward candidate selection.
NewLimitAutogene cevumeran plus pembrolizumab fails to significantly improve progression-free survival against pembrolizumab alone in first-line advanced melanoma, despite inducing neoantigen-specific T cells in most patients tested.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesInitial results are reported from the first prime editing trial, an ex vivo therapy for chronic granulomatous disease.
Prime editing23andMe enters Chapter 11 bankruptcy with its customer genetic database among the assets, and state attorneys general advise customers to delete their data.
Quantified selfRetro and OpenAI report a purpose-built model proposing improved Yamanaka factor variants, announced via press rather than publication.
Retro BiosciencesThe company moves its lead autophagy-enhancing compound toward first-in-human testing and reports seeking substantially larger funding.
Retro BiosciencesA bespoke base-editing treatment is designed, manufactured, and dosed for an infant with CPS1 deficiency in roughly six months, the first personalised in vivo editing therapy.
Somatic gene therapyApple's accessibility framework adds native support for BCI input with Synchron as a partner, and the company announces work with NVIDIA on decoding models.
SynchronA UK-funded programme is announced to develop the tools for building a synthetic human chromosome in cultured cells, with an attached social science strand.
Synthetic genomesThe Arc Institute releases State and launches the Virtual Cell Challenge; the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative starts the Billion Cells Project with 10x Genomics and Ultima Genomics.
Virtual cell modelsA cohort of semifinalist teams is selected and receives milestone funding to generate preliminary human data.
XPRIZE HealthspanInsilico Medicine begins a 320-patient randomized placebo-controlled phase 3 trial of rentosertib in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in China, the furthest any generatively designed small molecule has gone.
AI drug discoveryMerck and Moderna report that intismeran autogene, an individualized mRNA therapy encoding up to 34 algorithm-selected neoantigens, met its recurrence-free survival endpoint with pembrolizumab in resected melanoma.
AI drug discoveryAstaxanthin, meclizine, and mitoglitazone show no benefit when retested at different doses or starting ages, alongside eight other null results.
Interventions Testing ProgramMore than a decade after it was designed, the trial has not been funded at scale and has reported no results.
Nir BarzilaiMerck and Moderna announce on 19 August that INTerpath-001 met its recurrence-free survival primary endpoint and its distant metastasis-free survival secondary endpoint at a pre-planned interim analysis.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccinesThe foundation contracts a manufacturer to produce clinical-grade material for its gene-editing candidate ahead of regulatory review.
ProgeriaA spatial and kinetic model simulates the roughly 100-minute cycle of JCVI-syn3A end to end, including growth and division.
Virtual cell modelsThe EQUAL trial in the Netherlands reports that six months of smartwatch monitoring finds more new atrial fibrillation than usual care in adults over 65 at elevated stroke risk. The endpoint was diagnosis, not stroke.
Wearable health sensors