What if we had therapies to extend healthspan and prevent the onset of age related diseases? I’m excited to announce my first @ARPA_H program, PROSPR. The goal is to develop validated surrogate biomarkers, new clinical endpoints and therapies to collectively extend healthspan by 20 years for all Americans.

I remember exploring what could be pulled from NHANES during my PhD days. The data keep getting richer, and NCHS open access resources remain underutilized. That said, it’s critical to account for the limitations of serial cross-sectional data. True cohort studies, and especially RCTs, are essential for disentangling causality.

How do we tell whether a drug helps people function better and stay independent longer as they age? We think Intrinsic Capacity is a promising place to start. We recently shared our @ARPA_H-led consensus framework at the @reaganudall meeting with @US_FDA regulators. We are calling on researchers and trialists to build evidence for the use of IC across trials. Here's the link to the full document origin.arpa-h.gov/sites/defa… and a one pager for the key takeaways.

Interesting take. My only concern is that cross sectional data will only give us a predictive average for a population. NHANES is a valuable dataset but without longitudinal data you might not get high prediction for something like aging that has heterogenous trajectories.

Democratizing longevity is now possible! This approach is affordable to measure, using biomarkers from NHANES. By revising the algorithm to reduce costs while maintaining predictive accuracy and personalization, we unlock true value in longevity.

I’m in DC for @ARPA_H home week. It’s a beautiful day. Took a moment to see what’s being built on the White House lawn.

Most VC is just asset management with better branding. The 15th productivity SaaS. The third food delivery app. Consensus investing in whatever already worked last cycle. This year we backed a company turning 55-year-old stem cells back to their embryonic state. Another that vaporizes tumors without making a single incision. One reprogramming cells like software to cure disease instead of just managing symptoms. A brain-computer interface restoring motion to amputees. Every single one sounded impossible until it wasn't. The science is out there. Sitting in labs, underfunded, waiting for someone with the conviction to get behind it. The job isn’t just writing a check, it’s also believing when almost nobody else does. That's what VC looks like when it's aimed correctly. Simply civilizational upside. What's the most important science you think is criminally underfunded right now?

The pie is getting bigger

Go on. Look at these mice!!!! They're old and hungover but cruising around like it ain't no thang. NewLimit appears to have a therapy that reverses short and longterm damage from booze. Just remarkable results, heading to human trials next year. We get into it all on the latest Core Memory podcast with Jacob Kimmel, the co-founder and president of NewLimit.

The Unexpected Challenge of Hiring "Experienced" AI Pharma Talent "Many experienced hires have been living in a bubble and got used to being unproductive." In AI drug discovery, the real gap isn't credentials, it's the ability to actually produce. We don't need more press releases or research papers; we need drugs that work. It's time to burst the "unproductive bubble." #AlexZhavoronkov #InvestingTips #PharmaAI #BiotechReality #VentureCapital

Couldn’t agree more, PROSPR🖖

Interested in Entropy & Aging? Note that there will be an Entropy in Aging conference and workshop in Cologne end of August, enabled by the International Aging Entropy Open Research Network! Attendance is free of charge and focused on intimate discussions! sites.google.com/view/entrop… @Meyer_DH

It’s here🌟 I served as Medical Editor for this 50-page report, to bring rigorous, evidence-based longevity science to a broad general audience. Grateful to have contributed, excited to see the longevity conversation move further into the mainstream👇 🔗linkedin.com/feed/update/urn…

Two conversations this weekend make me think that there's a vibe shift afoot in Silicon Valley around what one should work on and what is worthwhile. Culturally, it feels like the moment is ripe for new frameworks: • Davos expert morality is stale and discredited. • It's also apparent that the "just be super based" Counter-Enlightenment is not really an answer. (Yes, woke went too far, but simply inverting it doesn't work.) • EA is no longer the automatic default for smart people. • There's increasing skepticism of slot and slop machine dynamics. Overall, "what is worthy and valuable?" feels like it's becoming more central.

I was honored to be involved in this important discussion on the clinical and regulatory path for gerotherapeutics. @ARPA_H, @reaganudall and @xprize. Thankyou to our @HHSGov colleagues at @US_FDA for your contribution.

@rtnarch Not to mention a very sizable nondilutive investment from @ARPA_H! Very exciting!!

That's a good idea @FDA @FDACommissioner

We need an Innovation Review Voucher, where a USA innovator (not others) can apply, based on their innovation in a drug category or molecule, for super fast regulatory approval, AND a transferable and subdividable 3 year commercial exclusivity, which covers the structure and close derivatives. Applications would be 90 day decisions, with a standard that a reasonable person would conclude that the technology was used or copied by the entity. In practice, this should prevent USA innovation from being decimated via less funding flowing in (which hurts patients in the long run), and if the commercial delay is critically important the vouchers are tradeable, and can be granted to more than one party at the discretion of the holder, so patients are protected. Prob have like ARPA H like structure or some new DOC panel to do it.

We live in a golden age of biology. So why are people still dying from disease? Because discovery and development move slower than they should. Today, we’re partnering with Incyte to change that. Kosmos is now the first agent that can compress months of drug development into weeks, from the earliest stages of scientific discovery through to FDA approval. @Incyte will be the first company to deploy it across their pipeline. Work that used to take a team of scientists months now happens in weeks. Patients can't wait, and neither can we.

The FDA wants companies to lean away from animal models, but @bettslacroix says that the technology is not yet advanced enough to entirely abandon them. #STATBreakthrough