Longevity ought to be a fundamental human right, the right to live as long and well as possible. Alex Zhavoronkov.
This month’s theme: ARDD 2026 Highlights
The Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) 2026 international conference, dedicated to aging research and the development of treatments to promote healthy longevity, took place in Boston from October 1 to 3, bringing together researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and biotechnology experts to present the latest scientific advances and discuss their clinical applications.
The conference highlighted the challenges of translating geroscience research into clinically validated interventions that prevent age-related diseases and extend healthspan. Key priorities include developing reliable biomarkers of biological aging, defining clinically meaningful outcomes, and designing trials that demonstrate improvements in health and physiological function. Researchers emphasized shifting from disease treatment towards prevention, using personalized and longitudinal approaches that integrate epigenetic clocks, proteomic signatures, metabolic indicators, and digital health data. International collaboration, standardized measurements, and transparent reporting of negative trial results are essential to improving research quality and avoiding repeated failures.
The discussions also explored emerging therapeutic strategies, including epigenetic reprogramming using OSK and OSKM factors, targeting inflammaging pathways such as the NLRP3 inflammasome, and investigating caloric restriction and its mimetics. While these approaches offer promising avenues for influencing biological aging, their safety and clinical benefits require further validation. The ELITE pilot study illustrated the potential of multidimensional assessments and lifestyle and pharmacological interventions in healthy aging, although its preliminary findings do not establish clinical efficacy. Finally, the conference emphasized the substantial economic value of extending healthy life and the need to improve pharmaceutical research and development through better target identification, predictive biomarkers, and rigorous clinical trials. Overall, the central goal is to develop evidence-based interventions that preserve physiological function, delay age-related diseases, and extend the number of years people live in good health.
The conference also highlighted the growing shift towards understanding aging as a network of interconnected biological systems rather than a collection of separate diseases. Novartis emphasized vascular, muscular, metabolic, cardiovascular, and neurological functions as potential therapeutic targets, while regenerative approaches such as LNA043 for cartilage regeneration and ACTRII inhibition with BYM338 aim to restore tissue function and address age-related conditions such as osteoarthritis and muscle loss. Exercise was also recognized as an important component of healthy aging, with research exploring its associations with reduced cardiovascular disease and dementia risk. The APEx collaboration between Novartis and BioAge seeks to use longitudinal human data to identify biological pathways linked to aging and beneficial responses to exercise, potentially revealing new therapeutic targets.
Discussions on pharmaceutical development emphasized the need for credible clinical evidence, viable regulatory pathways, and sustainable investment models to translate longevity research into treatments. Artificial intelligence could accelerate drug discovery by identifying shared mechanisms of aging and prioritizing therapeutic candidates, while GLP-1-based therapies offer opportunities to investigate links between metabolic health and biological aging. Other emerging strategies include combining interventions to target multiple aging mechanisms, investigating LL-37 in immune function, and targeting pathways associated with inflammation, cellular senescence, and immune dysfunction, including IL-11, FAP, and CD38. Finally, circulating proteins were discussed as potential biomarkers and mediators of communication between organs, offering opportunities to identify systemic mechanisms of aging. Overall, these approaches illustrate the potential of targeting interconnected aging processes, although their effectiveness in slowing human aging requires further clinical validation.
We saw the potential of artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery and advance longevity research, with Insilico Medicine’s development of rentosertib serving as an example of the progression from AI-driven target identification and molecule design to late-stage clinical development. Rentosertib, developed to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), entered the Phase III GENESIS-IPF-3 trial in 2026, with the first patient dosed in September and 320 participants planned over 52 weeks. Although this demonstrates the potential of AI-driven drug development, the trial is focused on IPF rather than establishing rentosertib as an anti-aging therapy. Insilico also introduced LongevityBench, Longevity LLM and Longevity Claw in a September 2026 publication in Cell. These research tools aim to help identify therapeutic targets, analyse longevity-related evidence and generate experimentally testable hypotheses, moving beyond descriptive biological aging clocks towards the discovery of interventions that may influence aging mechanisms. Eli Lilly also presented that a SURMOUNT-5 sub-study found that 72 weeks of tirzepatide treatment was associated with improvements across multiple epigenetic aging clocks in participants over 50. First-generation clocks indicated an approximately 0.5-year reduction in biological age, while second-generation clocks showed reductions exceeding 1.5 years; pace-of-aging clocks also suggested slower estimated aging. Organ-specific clocks indicated decreases in estimated heart, immune, kidney, and liver ages. Methylation-based predictions captured several metabolic improvements, including changes in BMI, glucose and HbA1c, although some predictions were inaccurate. Despite these promising findings, the small, single-arm analysis (single arm meaning that all participants received the same treatment, without a control group against which to compare the results) and limited follow-up mean the results are hypothesis-generating and do not yet prove that tirzepatide slows biological aging.
The FDA’s participation in a panel at ARDD 2026 was a significant milestone for the longevity field, bringing regulators and researchers together to discuss one of the sector’s biggest challenges: translating aging science into clinically validated therapies. Having FDA officials directly engage with the longevity research community created an important opportunity to discuss regulatory pathways, meaningful clinical endpoints, biomarker validation, and the evidence needed to demonstrate healthspan benefits. FDA officials emphasized that advancing longevity research does not require classifying aging as a disease. Progress depends on developing validated, function-based endpoints, reliable biomarkers, and shared longitudinal datasets to demonstrate meaningful healthspan benefits. The FDA outlined two potential regulatory pathways: demonstrating benefits across multiple age-related diseases or establishing a broader aging indication using composite measures of function, such as cognition, frailty and vision. Near-term trials should focus on older adults with multiple conditions and hard clinical outcomes, while collecting functional data to validate faster endpoints for future studies. Officials also highlighted the need for standardized mechanistic evidence, careful evaluation of repurposed drugs and pre-competitive collaboration to establish reliable biomarkers. Aging and longevity will be a priority in the FDA’s upcoming regulatory science agenda, with new trial guidance planned for early FY2027.
The good news of the month: AI system to support longevity research
A new study published in Cell introduces an AI system specifically designed to support longevity research. It combines language models trained on ageing-related data with 17 benchmark tasks to evaluate how well AI can analyse clinical information, epigenetics, gene activity, protein levels and genetic sequences. In many tests, these specialised models outperformed much larger general-purpose AI systems.
One promising application is the development of more accurate biological ageing clocks, which estimate how old our bodies appear to be compared with our chronological age. However, interpreting these measurements remains challenging: a lower biological age does not necessarily mean that the fundamental processes of ageing have been reversed. It may simply reflect an improvement in overall health.
By helping researchers analyse complex biological data and identify potential targets for new treatments, AI could accelerate longevity research. But first, scientists need to better define what ageing actually is and establish reliable ways to measure it.
News of Heales and the Longevity Community: Healthy Ageing & Longevity Assembly 2026
Finally, the 8th Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA) will be held in Brussels on 5 and 6 November, bringing together researchers and experts to discuss the latest developments in healthy ageing and longevity. Free but need registration.
For more information