XPRIZE Healthspan Finalist Teams Announced
From one perspective, the XPRIZE Healthspan research prize is a way to encourage what should be happening to a far greater extent in the development of means to treat aging as a medical condition, which is to assess which approaches are better than others. The field spends too much time on approaches that cannot improve on lifestyle choices, for example. Ideally this competitive assessment requires some useful consensus definition of aging and age-related degeneration to work against - which is presently lacking; aging clocks are a step in that direction, but cannot be trusted to provide useful results for any given novel intervention targeting mechanisms of aging. Thus the XPRIZE Healthspan leadership chose to go with benchmarking competing approaches against narrow definitions of function in a few areas where fairly standardized methodologies exist: muscle, cognition, immune capacity.
Launched in 2023, the seven-year, $101 million XPRIZE Healthspan competition is the first incentive health competition of its kind dedicated to accelerating the development and clinical testing of proactive, accessible interventions that target the biology of aging itself. Rather than treating age-related diseases after they occur, the competition challenges teams to restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function by at least 10 years - with an ambitious target of 20 years - in adults ages 50 to 90, all within one year or less of treatment. If successful, these breakthroughs have the potential to help millions of people live longer, healthier, and more independent lives.
Today, XPRIZE announced the 20 Finalist teams advancing to the next stage of the competition, marking a major milestone in the global race to transform how we age. Among the finalists, 10 teams from the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China were selected as Milestone 2 awardees and will each receive a $1 million award, totaling $10 million in milestone funding, to accelerate the development and clinical testing of innovative therapies designed to extend healthy years of life. In addition to funding, the teams will gain access to key clinical testing resources to support the next phase of their work.
Together, the finalist teams represent a diverse range of approaches targeting the biology of aging, including: novel medicines and biologics designed to improve metabolism, reduce inflammation, protect neurons, and repair damaged cells; regenerative approaches, including stem cell and gene-based therapies, that support cellular repair, energy production, and tissue health; extracellular vesicles and other next-generation delivery technologies that harness the body's natural processes to promote rejuvenation; AI-enabled precision health and personalized care models that combine data, existing medicines, nutraceuticals, and lifestyle interventions to optimize healthy aging.
Link: https://www.xprize.org/news/20-healthspan-finalist-teams-advance-in-the-race-to-extend-healthy-aging