XPRIZE Healthspan Finals

XPRIZE Healthspan Finals: The Latest in the Race to Extend Healthy Aging

Imagine reaching your 70s or 80s with the strength to keep moving, the clarity to stay engaged, and the independence to continue living life on your own terms. For too many people, the later decades of life are marked not by vitality, but by impaired muscle function, cognition, and immune function.

But what if we could change what it means to grow old? As populations age and age-related conditions continue to rise worldwide, improving healthspan has become one of the defining scientific and public health challenges of our time. It’s a challenge the $101 million XPRIZE Healthspan competition was created to address. As XPRIZE announces the 20 finalist teams advancing to the next stage of the competition, we’ll look at what XPRIZE means to the global race to transform how we age – and, more importantly, what the competition has decided to measure.

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Versatile Extracellular Vesicles and the Role They Play in Longevity

Versatile Extracellular Vesicles and the Role They Play in Longevity

From diagnostics to drug delivery to regenerative medicine, extracellular vesicles (EVs) are the messengers of the moment, offering a promising glimpse of future applications to the biologists who study them and the longevity experts interested in their powerful signaling properties. No EV-based therapeutic product has yet been formally approved for marketing, but clinical evidence is building around possible applications for EVs in the future – and their implications for longevity and regenerative medicine.

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The Circadian Clock and Aging

The Circadian Clock and Aging: How Sleep Affects Longevity and Wellbeing

The circadian clock is more than just a regulator of daily rhythms – it’s a key player in the aging process. The body’s internal 24-hour timer regulates sleep, metabolism, hormone release, and other physiological processes in sync with day-night cycles, and preserving its function may be as important to healthy aging as managing other age-related risk factors. Circadian rhythms are essential for health, and their disruption is linked to numerous age-related diseases, so maintaining the circadian clock is an important factor in increasing longevity and boosting healthspan.

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