Longevity Biotech in 2025: The Expert Roundup

How did the year 2025 turn out for longevity biotech? Was it surprising or more of the same? Exciting or disappointing? Was the progress fast-moving or excruciatingly slow? What should we expect in 2026? We asked five leading experts to weigh in.

Where did longevity biotech exceed your expectations in 2025, and where did it underperform or stall? Has this changed your long-term outlook for how fast the field will translate into approved therapies?

Kristen Fortney, CEO, BioAge

Longevity biotech exceeded my expectations in 2025 in how quickly it went mainstream within big pharma, largely because the GLP‑1 era made it obvious that metabolism, inflammation, and aging biology are deeply connected. Where it stalled is still clinical translation: we have many compelling preclinical mechanisms, but a comparatively thin set of rigorous human trials and hard endpoints. Approvals take time and real capital, so speed will come from anchoring aging mechanisms in tractable indications and using modern biomarkers to de‑risk early.

Mehmood Khan, CEO, Hevolution Foundation

2025 marked a real inflection point for healthspan science. We saw growing recognition from investors, policymakers, and the public that extending healthy years of life is not a niche ambition but a macroeconomic and societal imperative. At the same time, it became clear that human judgment remains essential. AI and digital tools are powerful, but they must be deployed within strong ethical, governance, and regulatory frameworks. These technologies are only as effective as the data, intent, and oversight behind them, making human wisdom and accountability non-negotiable.

Translation from discovery to clinical impact continues to be the bottleneck. Despite exciting scientific advances, moving from laboratory insights to scalable interventions is still slow. A major constraint is the absence of universally accepted biomarkers of biological aging: a shared language that researchers, industry, and regulators can trust, much like LDL cholesterol in cardiovascular disease. Overall, I remain optimistic but realistic. Progress will come from disciplined science, robust standards, and sustained collaboration rather than shortcuts.

Jamie Justice, Executive Director, XPRIZE Healthspan

Insilico Medicine brought my biggest breakthrough of the year: their AI-driven drug discovery pipeline focused on longevity targets delivered a novel target, a small molecule design for an inhibitor of Traf2- and Nck-interacting kinase (TNIK), and an accelerated testing pipeline that culminated in a successful Phase 2a clinical trial in the age-related disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. This is without a doubt a huge win for biotech in general, but seeing this breakthrough launched by a biotech rooted in longevity is beyond expectation. The potential of generative AI-discovered pathways and accelerated translational testing for aging-related conditions and longevity is difficult to overstate.

[Full disclosure: Alex Zhavoronkov is a scientific advisor to XPRIZE Healthspan, but I assure you that this in no way influenced my opinion. Insilico is not a team in our competition, and I am not an advisor to Insilico; I just get to fan-girl from the arena like everyone else!]

Nathan Cheng, General Partner at Healthspan Capital, Co-Founder of Vitalism and Longevity Biotech Fellowship

Venture funding in longevity still hasn’t recovered, but that’s mostly macroeconomic; biotech broadly went through a downturn and only started bottoming out mid-year. Progress is taking longer than I expected. For investors with dry powder, it’s an opportunity for good deals and higher impact.

What exceeded expectations was Washington. I didn’t anticipate the new administration being so explicitly pro-longevity. Jim O’Neill appointed as HHS Deputy Secretary, Dr. Oz at CMS, the new NIH and FDA leadership – each is knowledgeable on longevity and/or an outright advocate. The recent MAHA summit in DC had a panel on age reversal in the brain. On the state level, multiple states recently advanced right-to-try legislation (New Hampshire, Montana). The leverage of policy is seriously underrated in this space; more attention needs to be paid here.

Karl Pfleger, Investor, Founder of AgingBiotech.info

Nothing that happened in 2025 significantly changed my long-term outlook. Things move slowly in biotech. Most of what happened in terms of clinical progress, especially late-stage clinical, was in view long before 2025. Clinical trial stages advance slowly. A highlight was Stealth Bio finally getting approval (accelerated approval in this case) for elamipretide (aka SS-31) for a rare disease (Barth) after a long road of ups and downs. This approval is notable for being the first – likely of many – significant approval of a mitochondria therapeutic. Approaches targeting mitochondria will likely have wide applicability to many aging diseases.

An unexpected stall was that the manufacturing plant producing Scholar Rock’s anti-myostatin antibody had problems with the FDA, delaying its approval despite positive Phase 3 trial data, but this should hopefully just be a temporary setback. On the funding side, ARPA-H has been great, but NIH funding cuts and attacks on universities have been unexpectedly severe. Venture funding for biotechs also remains very tight.

Which event in longevity biotech from 2025 do you consider the most influential, and why? You’re welcome to name a runner-up.

Kristen Fortney

My pick is the “FGF21 moment”: within months, GSK (Boston Pharma), Roche (89bio), and Novo Nordisk (Akero) basically bought the class, putting ~$10B of validation behind a key longevity pathway that hits metabolism, inflammation, and fibrosis. It looks very real for MASH, with potential upside beyond that based on what we know from aging biology.

Mehmood Khan

One of the most influential developments in 2025 was the growing number of aging biology programs entering mid-stage clinical trials. Several senolytic, immune modulation, and epigenetic reprogramming approaches are now moving beyond early safety studies into trials that assess functional outcomes, reflecting the progression of the field. At the same time, strategic partnerships between longevity biotech startups and major pharmaceutical and technology companies signaled that healthspan is moving from the fringe into mainstream research and development.

For me, a defining moment was the Global Healthspan Summit in Riyadh. Bringing together global leaders across science, policy, investment, and industry demonstrated that healthspan has become a top-tier global priority and showed what is possible when the world aligns around a shared ambition for healthier, longer lives.

As a runner-up, the momentum of the XPRIZE Healthspan was notable. Seeing teams advance toward measurable restoration of function, not just lifespan extension, reinforced the field’s shift toward outcomes that truly matter to people such as mobility, cognition, and independence. Hevolution’s early anchoring support reflects our belief in bold, results-driven science.

Jamie Justice

As Executive Director of XPRIZE Healthspan, I am of course most influenced by the incredible progress within our own competition. We now have over 700 teams of academic scientists, biotechs, clinics, and students from 71 countries engaged in our competition. Our judges vetted more than 200 complete applications to name the Top 100 teams and awarded the Top 40 teams. Instituting rigorous processes to vet teams and setting audacious milestones to accelerate the translation of therapeutics to trials is incredibly rewarding professionally, and influential for our global teams, investors, funders, and partnership ecosystem.

Beyond our competition, other ecosystem drivers and announcements have been influential. Of note: 1) in the US, the ARPA-H Proactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (PROSPR) program received well-deserved attention as a driver of progress in healthy aging and longevity; 2) large pharmaceutical companies are investing and signaling strong interest in aging and longevity. This includes new XPRIZE Healthspan sponsors GSK – announced in May 2025 – and Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, who were both present and vocal about interests in longevity and age-related disease pathways at the Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) event hosted in Copenhagen in August. Collectively, these announcements and investments signal a watershed moment and promise for commercial development and scientific discovery in aging and longevity. The convergence of regulatory validation (see below), clinical trial initiation, and massive capital influx suggests we’re transitioning from pure research to translational medicine.

Nathan Cheng

Jean Hébert’s FRONT program launching at ARPA-H, easily. On the surface, it’s a US government program using stem cells and tissue engineering to repair brain damage. Few understand that this is actually an opening shot on goal to solve aging in the brain, not just slow aging or target one hallmark. FRONT is a significantly funded moonshot, and it will catalyze substantial matching private investment in replacement therapies.

The replacement paradigm is gaining traction more broadly. ARDD 2025 had its first replacement workshop. YZi/Binance Labs invested in Renewal Bio (stembroids). Vadim Gladyshev is doing serious work on heterochronic organ transplantation at Harvard and spoke optimistically about this strategy for longevity. Watch this space.

Karl Pfleger

I’d say that the collective, nearly simultaneous financing rounds of the big epigenetic partial reprogramming companies Life Bio, NewLimit, and Retro Bio, together with the involvement from big pharma’s biggest company, Lilly, in at least NewLimit’s round, is the collective “biggest thing.” The size of these rounds and their valuations may not be officially public but are on the whole quotable as numbers of, or fractions of, billions; a $1.6B valuation for NewLimit is reported on some websites. The whisper numbers for Life Bio’s valuation are lower but only by a fewfold, and multiple reports suggest Retro is trying to raise at a $5B valuation, though this round does not seem to be done unlike the others. In aggregate, these are gigantic numbers and will likely influence other valuations.

Thinking back to what you believed about longevity biotech on January 1, 2025, did anything this year genuinely surprise you or make you update your priors?

Kristen Fortney

I was surprised in a good way by how quickly big pharma and the government started treating longevity biology as a core R&D strategy. Lilly and Novo pushed their GLP‑1 ambitions well beyond weight loss and embraced the “longevity” label; Novartis is building out DARe around diseases of aging; and multiple biotechs that frame their work around extending healthspan are landing large partnerships from top pharma – not despite that framing, but because of it. On the government side, ARPA‑H is making big swings in healthspan and regeneration with PROSPR and FRONT.

Mehmood Khan

What stood out most this year was the strength of public demand. Citizens are increasingly calling for prevention and healthy aging to be central responsibilities of health systems. Our Global Healthspan Report reflects this growing expectation that governments invest earlier rather than simply treating later.

I was also reminded that capital alone cannot unlock this field. The real constraint is infrastructure, shared data, agreed biomarkers, and regulatory pathways. Without these foundations, innovation cannot scale, no matter how much money is deployed. This has updated my view on the next phase of progress. It will be driven less by isolated breakthroughs and more by global collaboration, aligned standards, and shared priorities across science, industry, and policy.

Jamie Justice

Our XPRIZE Healthspan registration closed in January 2025, leaving me the daunting task of directing the review of global submissions to award $10M at Milestone 1. I was uncertain about field quality and therapeutic originality. Our competition’s moonshot depends entirely on exceptional teams; snake oil won’t deliver results. To my relief, teams arrived with both practical approaches and novel therapies testable through rigorous, transparent methods.

We created an Innovations Landscape Report documenting team development, global scope, and paths to clinical trials for our teams – some entering trials for the first time, others seasoned. The report identifies potential and critical gaps requiring attention fo field progress. The response to our competition has been both overwhelming and surprising in the best possible way.

Nathan Cheng

Big Pharma’s interest in longevity surprised me. I had the standard model in my head: pharma is conservative, waits for de-risked assets, and acquires rather than innovates. Then at ARDD 2025, representatives from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk stood up and suggested GLP-1s (like semaglutide) are longevity drugs. Whether that’s true is debatable. What matters is the vibe shift.

GLP-1 agonists made Eli Lilly the first pharma ever to hit $1 trillion USD in market cap. That success rewired how pharma thinks about markets. The old model was to find people with a disease and treat it. The new model is to find the largest possible patient population and prevent disease. Listen to Dave Ricks on the Stripe podcast. Eli Lilly’s CEO sounds like a tech founder – talking direct-to-consumer models, AI partnerships with NVIDIA. The most conservative industry in healthcare is suddenly hungry for what’s next, and after obesity, what’s next is aging.

Karl Pfleger

Big pharma companies talking about and explicitly devoting resources to aging programs became much clearer in 2025. Their presence and explicitness in talking about aging at ARDD, such as specifically addressing it with respect to GLP-1 drugs, was much more direct than in prior years. It’s become clear that several big pharma companies are supporting the subsector.

Age1’s pharma report card is another source that reflects some of this shift. The partnerships data highlighted there was largely in the AgingBiotech.info/companies table already, but the report gathered that plus other indicators, and a few of the partnerships, such as Juvena’s, were only announced in 2025. A lowlight within this overall category, however, is Abbvie pulling out of their Calico partnership in 2025. But, 2025 showed me that big pharma is turning towards the aging sector a bit faster than I expected, which is great.

What are your expectations for 2026 in longevity biotech?

Kristen Fortney

In 2026, I’m focused on the clinical pipeline. Multiple clinical milestones are on the horizon, including readouts from the FGF21 class, NewAmsterdam’s CETP inhibitor, NLRP3 inhibitors (including BioAge’s), Insilico’s TNIK inhibitor, as well as Phase 1 data from exciting mechanisms at Retro, Rubedo, Juvena, Life, Cyclarity, and more. I’m also hopeful for sharper biomarker strategies and tighter trial designs in the space as a whole, so we can learn faster per dollar.

Mehmood Khan

Equity must be front and center. My greatest hope is that healthspan science does not become the privilege of a few. At Hevolution, our mission is to help ensure these advances are affordable, accessible, and globally relevant, so healthier aging becomes a universal opportunity rather than a luxury. I would like to see more multinational collaboration, including shared data, joint research, and co-funded initiatives. From a business perspective, public-private partnerships with structured risk-sharing between sectors will be critical to accelerate development and adoption. Ultimately, can this field help accelerate the shift from sickcare to preventive healthcare?

Jamie Justice

2026 marks a pivotal transition from preclinical promise to clinical reality in longevity biotech. XPRIZE Healthspan will award our Top 10 finalists $10M each to support one-year clinical trials restoring functional capacity. Beyond the competition, mega-funded programs like Retro Biosciences, and possibly Altos Labs, will advance toward human study, while Life Biosciences launches its epigenetic reprogramming therapeutic in trials.

Senolytic trials for Alzheimer’s continue progressing, mitochondrial therapeutics advance, and inflammation- or immune-targeting companies pursue new indications and fundraising rounds. Critically, some companies, trials, and therapeutics will inevitably fail to meet registered endpoints. This is not evidence of overhype or field-wide failure; it’s essential to testing. As we develop therapeutics, we must simultaneously develop testing frameworks: building trial ecosystems, establishing appropriate biomarkers and lead indicators, and identifying suitable populations and contexts of use. The field’s maturation depends on conducting this work openly, transparently, and with appropriate risk tolerance. Success requires embracing both breakthrough and setback as equally valuable data points informing our path toward interventions that genuinely extend human healthspan.

Nathan Cheng

Three things. First, replacement goes mainstream. The FRONT program will accelerate the space. Retro Biosciences is also advancing cellular replacement approaches: microglia replacement for the brain, blood stem cell replacement for the immune system. Investors will be forced to pay attention.

Second, the U.S.-China biotech race forces regulatory innovation. China surpassed the U.S. in clinical trial volume in 2024 – over 7,100 trials versus about 6,000. First-in-human trials launch faster and cheaper there. That data has compounding value, especially as AI gets better at learning from clinical outcomes. The U.S. will have to respond.

Third, AI gets serious about biology. Almost every major AI lab head – Dario, Demis, Sam – has longevity as a core motivation for their work. We’ve already seen AI solve protein folding, so what’s next? Perhaps virtual cells? Lots of hype in 2025, but still early. Gen-AI drugs? The first bets there are advancing in the clinic. The rate of progress of AI in jagged domains is likely to continue, and I’m curious to see what miracle the silicon gods will perform next.

Karl Pfleger

This is a broad question. Obviously, there will be more science, some clinical progress along with probably some setbacks, and more funding rounds along with some companies failing. The most important thing that I expect is continued progress at the late stage of the clinical pipeline. I expect Scholar Rock’s anti-myostatin antibody that succeeded in its Phase 3 trial to get FDA approval once the hiccups at the manufacturing plant are worked out or the company establishes a new location for production. While I haven’t analyzed the expected end dates of all interventions currently in Phase 3 that truly target core aging mechanisms, hopefully a couple of the 14 or so will announce some positive data.