New Report Identifies Viable Solutions for Longer, Healthier Lives

LOS ANGELES (August 1, 2019) – Today, XPRIZE is releasing the Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap, a digital report and interactive website that reveals 12 breakthroughs that can promote increased health and life expectancy for all. The Impact Roadmap was created in partnership with Founder of the Longevity Vision Fund and XPRIZE Board Member, Sergey Young, and will serve as a basis of future XPRIZE competitions.

According to The Lancet, more than 70 percent of all deaths can be attributed to chronic diseases, most of which are age-related—including cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, liver disease, and others. In the U.S., chronic diseases like these are the leading driver of the more than $3 trillion spent annually on health care, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Addressing the underlying aging process itself represents an audacious, high-impact opportunity to drastically reduce the emotional and economic devastation that accompanies these diseases of aging. Yet despite significant medical advancements in recent history, the aging process continues to mystify researchers and innovators.  

XPRIZE designs and operates global competitions to incentivize the development of technological breakthroughs that accelerate humanity toward a better future. Part of its Prize Design efforts include Impact Roadmaps – detailed reports that analyze complex and overlapping social, technological, economic, environmental, and policy issues, to identify the most effective solutions within a given domain. XPRIZE Impact Roadmaps, including the Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap, are created through extensive secondary research, expert interviews, collaborative workshops with leading organizations and partners, along with crowdsourced feedback and activities through a community of multidisciplinary experts around the world.

Impact Roadmaps and the breakthroughs they reveal lead to the identification of grand challenges -- a key function of XPRIZE. Challenge identification serves Prize Design and thereafter multi-million-dollar incentivized XPRIZE competitions. The breakthroughs of the Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap, have identified five challenges for accelerating innovation: advancing scientific understanding of the aging process; improving treatment tools to counter the aging process; expediting drug development and approval processes; raising public awareness and improving public perception; and ensuring accessibility of treatments.  

The Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap lists the following breakthroughs for overcoming the identified challenges and achieving a longer, healthier and more fulfilling human life:

• Aging, Shared: A shared database to collect real-time aging data that will be collected from individuals, to track their vital signs and lifestyle choices and activities.
• Aging, Quantified: A set of widely agreed-upon biomarkers for biological age that will be accepted by the community of longevity and aging researchers and utilized as a benchmark in any R&D effort in the field.
• Caloric Restriction for All: Replicating the beneficial effects of caloric restriction, whether a treatment, diet regime or biomedical device, without the negative effects.
• Preparing for Aging: A method or tool that can detect at least three aging-related diseases and conditions and will provide an earlier and more accurate diagnosis than any of the other commonly used methods employed today.
• The Age-Reversed Animal: An animal model whose normal biological age is reversed by an intervention, and shows a cycle of rejuvenation can be repeated at least once.
• Aging, Delayed: Postponing the emergence of at least three aging-related diseases or conditions with the same treatment, not one disease at a time, but instead by targeting more upstream factors related to aging.
• Homeostasis Restored: A solution that will analyze people’s capacity to uptake nutrients, as well as the bioavailability of critical biomolecules in their body, and provide actionable advice on how to restore youthful levels.
• Aging, Understood: A theory of aging that ties all the different mechanisms of aging together and explains the relationship between them in a quantifiable way, while also predicting how any change of the involved factors can affect the aging process.
• Exercise Made Easy: A treatment or biomedical device that can replicate the beneficial effects of exercise, without the user having to exert the body. 
• Aging, Arrested: A treatment for completely stopping the body’s aging process for at least one year; The treatment will likely be demonstrated on mammals first, and could later be translated to human beings.
• In Silico Aging: A model of the human body that is detailed and accurate enough to replace some experimentation on mammalian models and even human beings with in-vitro experimentation and clinical trial simulation. 
• Aging, Circumvented: A method to move the brain—with or without the entire head—of one person to the body of another, or to a non-human vessel, for over a year, while maintaining conscious thought or (in the case of cryonics) demonstrating that consciousness can be recovered after a time.

“XPRIZE is built on the notion that solutions to the world’s greatest challenges can come from anyone, anywhere,” said Zenia Tata, chief impact officer of XPRIZE. "Through XPRIZE Impact Roadmaps, we gather leading experts and research all around the world to pave the way for these future solutions to come to life. The Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap lays the groundwork for ensuring all of humanity has the potential to live long, healthy lives and we’re so proud of the collaboration, dedication and passion that produced this report."

The Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap also includes a social media contest where users can upload a video of themselves answering the question, “How would your bucket list change, if you knew you'd be in perfect health at 120 years old?” for a chance to win a cash prize. The “Judge’s Pick” Winner will receive $5,000 and the “Most Buzz” Winners will receive $2,500. To get involved visit impactmaps.xprize.org/longevity/get-involved.

"We are on the brink of a Longevity Revolution: a world where everybody can live a long, healthy, high-quality life; where previously incurable diseases can finally be treated; and where the aging process itself can be slowed, stopped, or even reversed,” said Sergey Young. “This is the world we want for ourselves, our children, and for everybody else. We are about to step into this new paradigm, and I hope this Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap will help to illuminate the path to achieving it."

In addition to the Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap, XPRIZE has produced the Future of Housing Impact Roadmap, sponsored by Lowe’s, and the Future of Forests Impact Roadmap supported by Kimberly Clark. To learn more or get involved with the Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap, visit impactmaps.xprize.org.