Yet the timeline and costs are very uncertain, which is a wake-up call to the actions we can take today.
Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote in 1789 was “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Whilst taxes remain stubbornly certain, defying death is attracting an extraordinary amount of scientific attention. In fact, longevity biotechnology is a massive growth industry and attracted a record $18.4 billion of global investment in 2025.
The most seductive idea is “longevity escape velocity” (LEV), popularised by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey in 2004. The theory is that medical progress could eventually add more than a year to your remaining life for every year that passes. So, whilst you get older, science buys you more time than ageing takes away. In other words, we defy death.
A more realistic, yet equally remarkable achievement, would be to add 20 healthy years to life expectancy, allowing many more of us to reach our 90s fully active. The race focuses on three broad ideas: replace damaged human parts, repair ageing biology, and reprogramme old cells to behave more like young ones.
This article explores some of the breakthrough developments and what we can do today to turn back our biological clock.
Organ replacement
One route to a longer life is wonderfully mechanical: regrow and replace the parts that wear out. To note, there are around 8,300 people on the transplant list in the UK.
This starts with stem cells – cells that can develop into specialised cell types, such as muscle, blood or nerve cells. In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka showed that mature adult cells could be reprogrammed back into immature unspecialised cells (or induced pluripotent stem cells), capable of becoming almost any type of cell in the body. It transformed regenerative medicine and earned him a share of the 2012 Nobel Prize. The original approach, however, carried serious tumour risks and needed to be adapted.
Before AI, scientists would supply the right signals to stem cells and then biology did the heavy lifting, but the process was wasteful and time-consuming. Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold was a breakthrough, predicting the three-dimensional shapes of more than 200 million proteins and accelerating biological research, including areas relevant to regenerative medicine.
Whilst the goal is to grow a replacement organ from your own cells, the first step towards this is using gene-edited pig organs, or xenotransplants. These can still involve as many as 69 genetic edits. In January 2022, the first genetically modified pig heart transplant to a human was performed. This was followed in March 2024 by the first genetically modified pig kidney transplant into a living person. Formal human trials have now begun.
One of the most exciting developments is the regeneration of the thymus, a small gland behind the breastbone. Some biotechnologists see the thymus as the most critical gatekeeper to healthier ageing because of its central role in the immune system. The thymus produces a diverse range of T-cells that recognise and attack new viruses, bacteria and cancers. The thymus is most active when we are young and degenerates after puberty. As it shrinks, we produce fewer new T-cells, contributing to more infections, weaker vaccine responses and greater vulnerability to cancer.
The Information Theory of Ageing
Another route to a longer life is by reprogramming our cells: resetting them to have the same quality of information as when we were young.
Harvard geneticist David Sinclair developed the hypothesis that our cells age not because our DNA changes, but because we lose some of the epigenetic “instruction manual”, or the software that turns specific genes on or off. He compares this to a DVD where scratches on the surface make the information more difficult to read accurately. As we age, our cells accumulate “epigenetic noise” and can lose their identity and function.
Sinclair and colleagues have produced remarkable results in mice, partially reprogramming cells and restoring lost vision. This has now moved on to humans. In June 2026, Life Biosciences dosed the first participant in a trial of a treatment aimed at optic nerve diseases.
An AI Longevity Vaccine
Yet another route to a longer life would be to rejuvenate: this would clear out earlier cellular damage and eliminate some of the drivers of age-related disease.
In September 2026, Insilico Medicine launched a research programme it calls “Longevity Vaccines”. Rather than target an external virus, the idea is to programme a patient’s own immune cells to hunt down damaged cells that help drive age-related disease, without attacking healthy tissue. Insilico has already produced an intriguing human result with rentosertib, an AI-designed drug for pulmonary fibrosis. In a trial, patients taking it showed a lower predicted biological age across six different blood-protein ageing clocks.
Human trials of a “Longevity Vaccine” may still be several years away.
The $101 million moonshot
There’s always room for a competition to incentivise innovation.
The XPRIZE Healthspan was launched in 2023. It is a $101 million global competition to restore muscle, cognitive and immune function by a minimum of 10 years in adults aged 50 to 90. Teams are judged not just on whether a treatment works, but whether it can be accessible, affordable and scalable globally.
The competition created phenomenal interest from more than 600 teams across 58 countries. In August 2026, the field was narrowed to 20 finalists, of which 10 teams were each awarded $1 million to accelerate clinical testing. Trials run through 2029, and the grand prize is due to be awarded in 2030.
The prize is not asking who can produce the most flattering “biological age” number. It asks whether people actually function more like younger people. The finalists are pursuing a wide range of ideas, including gene therapies, cellular repair, drugs and stem-cell approaches.
We will know a great deal more in three or four years.
Bryan Johnson
And there is room for a self-funded human lab rat with a bold claim of immortality by 2039.
The most visible “performance artist” for longevity is Bryan Johnson. He is not so much inventing treatments as testing the science on himself, with hundreds of measurements, blood tests and scans.
His data collection is incredibly rigorous, with daily biomarkers plus regular blood panels, ultrasounds and MRIs. His protocol includes tightly controlled sleep, a nutrient-dense diet, intense exercise and a formidable stack of supplements.
In 2023, he was heavily criticised for taking blood plasma from his 17-year-old son and quietly ended the experiment after reporting no measurable benefit.
Johnson is now 49 and measures the biological performance of organs throughout his body. According to his own data, some of his fitness and vascular measures compare with people in their late teens or 20s.
What about cryonics?
If all else fails: freeze frame.
If time runs out, cryonics could bridge the gap. After legal death, a body or brain can be stored at around -196 degrees C in liquid nitrogen. Biological decay becomes extraordinarily slow, although it does not literally stop. Prices vary widely. Tomorrow Bio, a leading European provider, currently quotes €75,000 for brain-only preservation and €200,000 for whole-body preservation, plus annual membership. The argument for brain-only preservation is that the physical basis of memory, personality and identity resides in the brain; whole-body preservation keeps the rest of the body too.
The goal is to wait until future medicine can revive the person and cure the original cause of death. No human, or whole complex mammal, has ever been revived from this state, so this remains hope rather than medicine. Less dramatic is freezing healthy stem or immune cells today in the hope that future medicine can use them to repair tissues, grow organs or reboot parts of the immune system.
Enter the longevity billionaires
Longevity development and cryonics look, at least initially, to be primarily for the billionaires.
Today’s gene and cell therapies cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, some more than £1 million. Rejuvenation could therefore be possible long before it is affordable. As a result, in the early years, health inequality may widen as it will only be affordable to the few. But history from smartphones to gene sequencing shows that technological costs can fall dramatically with scale, and the commercial prize is far larger if these advances reach millions rather than a handful of billionaires.
In the UK, NICE assesses whether new treatments offer sufficient benefit and value for the NHS. But even a cost-effective treatment can be difficult to roll out when millions qualify. Mounjaro for obesity is a good example: given the cost per patient and the number of people who could benefit, the NHS is limiting its availability. In comparison, statins are inexpensive and widely offered to people at raised cardiovascular risk. Any future ageing treatment could face the same financial challenge – the cost per patient x the number of patients may simply prove unaffordable.
Meanwhile, the cheapest longevity technology is already here
Here is the uplifting part.
While science searches for ways to make old cells behave like young cells, we already know how to slow many of the processes associated with ageing. Much of it is in our control and has no or low cost.
Move more. Maintain muscle mass. Sleep properly. Eat well. Avoid too much alcohol. Stay socially connected. Keep challenging the brain. Do not smoke.
Unfortunately, none of these lifestyle actions will generate a Silicon Valley company valuation, but their advantage is that they have been tested on millions of humans, rather than a laboratory full of mice.
These actions can improve many measures of biological ageing, and small changes add up. Whilst this may not lead to LEV, we can feel better and happier, as well as healthier.
The next decade will be fascinating, but the time to change is now
We are living in the most fascinating period of biotechnology innovation. Futurists, AI entrepreneurs and biotechnologists are promising extended health and longevity around the corner. Whilst LEV may be unrealistic, many conditions associated with ageing may become treatable in the next few decades. But to become affordable at scale for the general population, we may be waiting more than two decades.
Until then, there is a great deal we can all do to bank more biological age improvements for ourselves. The smartest longevity strategy is to use what has been proven to work now – to be more active, to eat whole foods, to sleep well, to be mentally active and socially connected.
Sources and further reading
The article is intentionally light to read. These are the principal sources behind the examples and claims.
Longevity escape velocity: de Grey A.D.N.J. Escape velocity: why the prospect of extreme human life extension matters now. PLOS Biology 2(6), e187 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020187
Longevity investment: Longevity.Technology. $617 billion longevity biotech market takes shape. 16 September 2026. https://longevity.technology/news/617-billion-longevity-biotech-market-takes-shape/
Stem-cell reprogramming: Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 – mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2012/press-release/
AI and protein structure: Google DeepMind. AlphaFold transforms biology for millions around the world. 28 July 2022. https://deepmind.google/blog/alphafold-transforms-biology-for-millions-around-the-world/
Xenotransplantation: Massachusetts General Hospital. World’s first genetically edited pig kidney transplant into a living recipient. 21 March 2024. https://www.massgeneral.org/news/press-release/worlds-first-genetically-edited-pig-kidney-transplant-into-living-recipient
Xenotransplant clinical trials: United Therapeutics. First transplant in the EXPAND clinical trial of UKidney, 3 November 2025; FDA clearance for UHeart clinical trial, 15 May 2026. https://ir.unither.com/press-releases/2025/11-03-2025-120022270 ; https://ir.unither.com/press-releases/2026/05-15-2026-230017490
UK transplant waiting list: NHS Blood and Transplant. Organ donation and transplantation; around 8,300 people are currently estimated to be on the UK Transplant Waiting List. https://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/what-we-do/transplantation-services/organ-donation-and-transplantation/
Thymus and immune ageing: Age-related thymic involution: mechanistic insights and rejuvenating approaches to restore immune function. 2026. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41686895/
David Sinclair and OSK: Lu Y. et al. Reprogramming to recover youthful epigenetic information and restore vision. Nature 588, 124-129 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2975-4
First human OSK trial: Life Biosciences. First Patient Dosed in Phase 1 Trial of ER-100 for Optic Neuropathies. 9 June 2026. https://www.lifebiosciences.com/life-biosciences-announces-first-patient-dosed-in-phase-1-trial-of-er-100-for-optic-neuropathies/
Longevity Vaccines: Insilico Medicine. Insilico Launches AI-driven Longevity Vaccines Research for Aging-related Diseases and Human Longevity. 15 September 2026. https://insilico.com/news/lgv150926en-ai-driven-longevity-vaccines
Rentosertib and biological-age signals: Zhavoronkov A. et al. Integration of proteomic aging clocks in a phase 2a clinical trial supports simultaneous geroprotective assessment. Nature Biotechnology (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-026-03286-y
XPRIZE Healthspan: XPRIZE. Healthspan Awards Ceremony 2025 (over 600 teams across 58 countries); Competition overview; and 10 Finalist Teams Awarded $1M to Advance in XPRIZE Healthspan, 11 August 2026. https://www.xprize.org/news/xprize-healthspan-awards-ceremony-2025 ; https://www.xprize.org/competitions/healthspan ; https://www.xprize.org/news/10-finalist-teams-awarded-1m-to-advance-in-xprize-healthspan-101-million-race-to-transform-healthy-aging
Bryan Johnson: Fortune reported no benefit from the 2023 young-plasma experiment; Johnson set out his 2039 immortality goal in January 2026. https://fortune.com/well/2023/07/08/bryan-johnson-plasma-exchange-results-anti-aging/ ; https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/blogs/news/you-might-be-immortal-by-2039
Cryonics: Society for Cryobiology. Position Statement: Cryonics. November 2018. https://www.societyforcryobiology.org/assets/documents/Position_Statement_Cryonics_Nov_18.pdf ; Tomorrow Bio, current cryopreservation pricing. https://www.tomorrow.bio/become-a-member
NICE, Mounjaro and statins: NICE. Tirzepatide for managing overweight and obesity – Implementation. Updated 1 September 2025. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta1026/chapter/4-Implementation ; NICE. Cardiovascular disease: risk assessment and reduction, including lipid modification. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng238/chapter/Recommendations
Lifestyle and biological age: Lee-Odegard S. et al. Reversal of proteomic aging with exercise – results from the UK Biobank and a 12-week intervention study. npj Aging (2026). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-025-00318-w
