Tapping into the genetics of exceptional human longevity
What drew BioAge CEO and Co-Founder Kristen Fortney, PhD to aging biology was its transformative potential for human health. Her early work focused on the genetics of exceptional longevity — studying people who age successfully, living beyond 100 with minimal time spent in poor health. That research became the inspiration for BioAge: the idea that uncovering the biological drivers of healthy aging could lead to therapies that extend both lifespan and healthspan.
The benefits of simply expanding lifespan without improving healthspan have limited value. Delaying the incidence of age-related diseases, or compressing morbidity, is key for an already aging global population. “None of us want to be sick for an additional 10 years,” says Fortney. “What we ultimately care about is living healthier for longer.”
A growing list of interventions have been shown to extend healthy lifespan and delay multiple diseases in mice. “Translating these findings into human therapies could open up meaningful new avenues for improving population health”.
“None of us want to be sick for an additional 10 years. What we ultimately care about is living healthier for longer.”
Kristen Fortney, CEO & Co-Founder, BioAge
Early intervention is key to drug-targeting aging biology
While every illness is rooted in its own biology, aging is a major risk factor across the board. Inflammation, for example, can predispose people to a wide range of diseases. Today, disease biologists are increasingly recognizing that early intervention can lead to better outcomes.
BioAge has developed brain penetrant NLRP3 inhibitors which will go into the clinic later this year, with multiple applications for metabolic diseases and more broadly.
“One pathway we’re excited about is NLRP3, the inflammasome. These inhibitors can be effective not only in treating, but intervening earlier in the course of those diseases.”
Kristen Fortney, CEO & Co-Founder, BioAge
Evidence also suggests that in animals, reducing inflammation – especially neuroinflammation, which increases with obesity – can correct appetite and improve healthspan.
Harnessing the power of exercise through pharmaceutical partnership
Beyond direct drug interventions, understanding the biology of beneficial lifestyle factors also carries great potential. Sleep, diet and exercise are the makeup of a healthier, longer life. Exercise is an area of particular focus because it’s potentially the only proven anti-aging intervention.
“We’re very excited about the biology of exercise. It’s a very promising biology to be able to mimic with a therapeutic.”
Kristen Fortney, CEO & Co-Founder, BioAge
“A lot of your body’s key responses to exercise decline with age, and that becomes really problematic as you get older,” continues Fortney.
One example is the body’s ability to produce the molecule apelin. BioAge’s work on apelin mimetics could have multiple metabolic benefits, such as the potential to increase weight loss in the fight against obesity.
Building on this approach, BioAge is partnering with Novartis to discover new drug targets at the intersection of aging biology and exercise. By analyzing existing studies that compare people who age healthily with those who don’t, the collaboration aims to identify molecular differences linked to the body’s response to exercise.
The benefits of exercise are mediated by the biology, and there are factors that help translate those benefits into benefits for the body.
“If we can understand what those switches are, other potential targets could be a very rich source of new drugs that are relevant across multiple different conditions, from metabolic to neurological.”
Developing therapies for extending healthspan
The landscape of aging biology is evolving. While it’s relatively new science, new incentives are emerging. For instance, Novartis has a new division: DARe (Diseases of Aging and Regenerative medicine).
“There’s growing recognition that we can discover important new targets for disease by looking at the biology of aging, examining the changes that happen in early onset disease as you age. These targets could be a potentially rich source for new drugs.”
Some mechanisms of aging still lack approved treatments or regulatory pathways — but they hold real potential for future therapies with broad population benefits. Sarcopenia, the loss of skeletal muscle mass, strength, and function with aging, is one example. “As you become frail, you become sarcopenic and lose your independence, which may mean you have to go into a nursing home, which is a terrible outcome.”
Future outlook
The biology of aging has already yielded valuable insights, but is still in its early stages as a scientific discipline. Fortney believes there's still much more to discover in the field after years of being an under-resourced area of research.
“Examining the literature on aging biology, we see a very short list of interventions that will reproducibly make mice live longer.”
However, Fortney sees momentum building. Several well-known aging mechanisms, such as NLRP3 and FGF21, show strong potential to drive meaningful health improvements. One of the most transformative ideas on the horizon is epigenetic reprogramming — resetting cells to a younger state to unlock broad benefits across the organism, explains Fortney.
This foundational science is leading to the formation of many new and exciting companies, and even technology breakthroughs, underlining the scope for opportunity in biopharma.
“What most excites me is that there's a clinical pipeline today where there wasn't before.”
