there might be therapeutic opportunities so that we can Target not just one disease at a time but really looking at this as an opportunity to make a global shift 8 10 years ago I started becoming really enamored because I felt like we could do something about it let’s go back to what we as humans evolved 100,000 years ago the last thing you wanted to do to perpetuate your genes and your species was take food from your grandchildren’s mouth so you would die we know that aging is a primary risk factor for almost every disease but we know that this can be targeted the next great idea could come from anyone these are the things that will improve function and keep people engaged active healthy participating that’s the goals everybody Peter here this episode is sponsored by X prise imagine a future where aging brings more time with your family and friends opportunities for continued learning second or third
[00:01:00] careers and actually allows you to fulfill your entire bucket list and go for a second one a future where healthy aging is not a luxury but a necessity we designed X prise healthspan to make that future a reality x- prise healthspan is the world’s largest Health prize in fact it’s the largest prize on the planet it’s a 7-year $101 million Global competition that incentivizes teams to develop and test Therapeutics that Target the biology aging to improve function and extend your Healthy lifespan now here’s the details on the prize this radical collaborative effort is going to bring together top scientists clinicians policy makers industry experts nonprofits to create a future where aging is something that we’re not scared about because we’re making a 100 years old than you 60 we’re adding decades onto our health span so if you’d like to be involved please join the conversation by following X prise on
[00:02:01] YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Facebook on X and Discord or go to x pri.org and learn more about X prise healthspan I cannot tell you how pumped I am about this competition you know going to space has been something I wanted to do since a kid xprize has really opened up the doors and living to 120 in a healthful fashion that’s what this x prise is going to do now back to the episode welcome everybody to moonshots this is a special segment for us uh for me in particular this is the launch of the $101 million ex prise health span the largest competition ever in human history and for me the X prise hopefully for you this is an X prise that’s going to change your life change the life of your family your friends your parents this is about the potential to add 20 healthy years onto your life uh nothing more of value than our health our health
[00:03:02] is our new wealth and joining me here today to discuss this ex prise is Jamie Justice uh Dr Jamie Justice the head of our healthspan exerprise Jamie uh good morning to you how are you doing good morning Peter it’s really good to see you it’s great to see you too we’re just back from uh Riad in Saudi Arabia where we announced this competition to the world uh and then on a uh media blitz uh doing TV radio segments around the world from Washington DC to New York to California uh really letting people know about how the future is going to unfold for them in terms of a not a longer lifespan per se but a longer Health span um right do you mind if I just do a proper introduction of you sure uh because people need to know uh the rock star who’s heading this so Dr Jamie Justice is our Executive Vice President
[00:04:01] of the health domain at The X prise the executive director of X prise Health span our largest prize ever uh Adjunct professor of internal medicine uh in gerentology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University uh what I can say is that I searched and interviewed you know probably close to 100 individuals uh and when we finally chose you Jamie I had uh the best verification people congratulating me did you find her how did you get her um and so super excited I mean uh we’re going to go into the details of what this competition means how it’s going to impact individuals what 20 years of additional Health means um how we’re going to judge this uh but let’s begin with the fact that you gave up a tenure track for this competition which I can say you know uh one is very I say low risk but this is a big bold
[00:05:00] crazy idea so what got you to uh to join us at The X prise oh my gosh Peter I’m think it’s a great question and first I just want to say how honored I am to be at X prise is that you know as an as an academic this wasn’t anywhere on my radar as you mentioned I was actually marching very well towards tenure had my promotions materials in got a new Grant had great things going on um but this opportunity was just incredible it’s like you had gone out and raised funds and pull together people and ideas that is exactly what I’ve been trying to do on the academic side but with such a much greater expanse in Vision so that I think we can actually make change and so you know that’s uh I would say it’s the beauty of X prise and I don’t think anyone else in the world is doing this in the way that it can be done here um and so yeah no I’m delighted and so just to give the folks online you might be a little less familiar with me but I know Peter you and I know each other well but
[00:06:00] again I was an academic investigator was working in a new field within aging that really looks at the biology of Aging um not just as a discipline on you know as its own thing but really looking at that biology and see if there might be therapeutic opportunities so that we can Target not just one disease at a time which we can talk about what that’s gotten us or but really looking at this as an opportunity to make a global shift mindset and in terms of POC and how we approach think about and treat human aging um and so we know that aging is a primary risk factor for almost every disease but we know that this can be targeted and that we’ve been doing this in animals and my work has really been in translating that and looking at the effects not just on keeping us less dead and more alive but how do we actually improve our health what are we doing traditional medic not done great there a lot of people think of aging as
[00:07:00] a disease right there’s been a big Push by near bersel and David Sinclair and others um and and a lot of conversation about okay how do we slow this disease stop it or even reverse it um what you know speak to that for a moment about the idea of Aging as a disease that and and the and the FDA and Company should think about it how do you think about it yeah so that’s a great question and this has been actually a really active area within the field you know I have actually been asked many times to sit on panels to talk about exactly this and I know that there are many people within the field that do categorize it as a disease I’ve really been more on the risk factor side but for a few reasons and they might not be intuitive you know one is this biology can it be targeted therapeutically is it intervenable is it malleable absolutely um you know it is the driving risk factor for every chronic disease almost every single one that share very very few other traditional clinical risk
[00:08:01] factors and yet aging is it and that we know that you know really critical work right is that we can look at these mechanisms and this is the other thing that we’ve learned over the last 10 to 20 years is that there is a distinct biology and so these are some of the Frameworks around where this is where people say yes is a disease because not only does it have this distinct biology but it has a couple of critical features one is that this biology is conserved across multiple species know two if you do something to these processes to aggravate them make them worse turn them up you can shorten animals lifespan and this is across many many species and then three if you can do something that you can Target you can block you can ameliorate you can actually extend lifespan and also Health span you can look and how see how they function how they Thrive within the time that they’re alive and so those are three critical criteria now about
[00:09:00] disease or not disease I tend to shy away from that do I think it can be regulated yes do I think we can have an indication within the FDA absolutely and actually the FDA is willing to play ball what they need is they need investigators and they need enough ground swell from within the field itself that we bring them something that they can work with the FDA is not in the business of making determinations like this but they will absolutely whether you call it a disease or not they also often you can get um you can get approved indications for risk factors for disease they do this with statins we do this with many other preven rentables and so regardless of what we call it or how we get there it absolutely is a target for Therapeutics it absolutely is viable and I think it’s critically important that we pull together build some consensus and bring something to them so they can create change on our behalf they just won’t hand it to us yeah well that’s what this exerprise is about about uh for those of you who
[00:10:01] haven’t been following X prise I’ll take a second to give a little bit of background and then I want to jump into this competition because one of my goals here is that if you’re a team out there that wants to play in this competition if you’re looking for your moonshot and uh and solving uh aging or extending Health span is your moonshot then you’re going to want to play in this X prise and go for part of that $11 million if not for the whole thing so what is so X prise in particular um were 29 years old hard to believe it’s 29 years old it feels like yesterday I know Peter that’s your age did you yeah you were five when it started exactly uh so the I read the Spirit of St Louis book that Lindberg won the polter prize for in 1994 it was given to me as a as a presid and it got me inspired to create a prize for space flight and I didn’t know who was going to put up the money who was going to be the Pulitzer uh the Nobel right the name
[00:11:01] of the prize so I used the word the letter X as a variable to be replaced and um anyway it took a while uh the Ansari family finally put up the $10 million for this first flight for for uh for space flight this first prize for space flight and we named that one the Ansari X prise on the heels of that success uh with Bert ran building spaceship one and then selling the rights to Richard Branson to create Virgin Galactic uh I was able to recruit Elon Musk and uh Larry Page and Jim Cameron on to our board and many others and we built it into a platform and since then we raised uh over $300 million in xprize competitions that’s driven about3 to4 billion in expenditures by all the teams trying to win that 300 million they’re all optimists going after this and um super pumped that over the next uh you know 90 to 120 days we’re going to be launching a quarter of a billion actually just launched a $101 million prize and we
[00:12:01] going to be launching another $120 Million worth of prizes uh very shortly so stay tuned for those but this one the health span prize man oh man uh it’s been a journey of about 15 years since the very first con uh conversation here uh 5 years in Earnest and uh I I feel like I just gave birth with you my I you a surrogate mom or the mom here but I don’t want I don’t want to make this but we’re co-parenting theer co-parenting we’re co-parenting this prize so uh let’s dive in uh actually Peter before we go on to that what I’d love to know so you know I love aging this has been my scientific field but you’re a huge name in aging too not you know because you’ve been your passion your drive your area I mean you have really coalesced quite a group of people to help tackle this with you so do you mind if I I know
[00:13:02] it’s your podcast but how did you get into I love it Jamie thank you you know I got into it I mean I came from a medical family I went to medical school years ago and I tell people don’t ever come to me for anything I’ll off your two for one special on your on your appendix uh but um I became enamored in space first which gave rise to the original insar ex prize and then it’s taken so damn long to open up the Bas Frontier I said I’ve got to add a 100 years to my lifespan uh and it was about 8 10 years ago I started becoming really enamored because I felt like we could do something about it I felt like finally the tools existed the earliest days of AI but in particular Gene you know Gene therapies and crisper there was uh you know I tell the story of seeing a long live a television show and Long Live sea life that I learned that boohead Wales could live 200 years in Greenland Sharks Club 500 years and I asked the question
[00:14:01] if they can live that long why can’t we and my answer was it’s either a software or Hardware problem and we’re going to be able to solve that and so I think for me the biggest business opportunity in the world is longevity and the biggest gift to humanity uh would be longevity when I say longevity I really mean Health uh longevity of Health versus life and we should get into what that what the difference between lifespan and health span is but I become just you know I’ve got a new book uh longevity a practical Playbook which just came out I’m uh focused in on Fountain Life as a company and a sister company life force and but this prize has been um has been something I’ve been Relentless about just the same way as the very first prize in space flight it’s like I know there’s a there there I know that if we get the right minds thinking about this and like like you said it’s it’s you
[00:15:00] know typically you back one single approach but here’s a chance to appro to back hundreds or thousands of approaches to solving this challenge so thank you thank you for that question um and uh was there a positive moment in your life that got you excited about this that steered you towards you knowy so funny Peter I’ve gotten to know you so well and I didn’t realize that your intro to this was actually shockingly similar to mine and so I was in uate school and had started doing work around you know looking at function and had just started doing work in aging and looking at some of the common causes for functional Decline and disability with aging really digging into some of the mechanisms and potential treatments and I went to one of the most interesting it was actually it was a point Counterpoint discussion about sort of the causes of Aging where we had a oneide um an investigator named Tom Johnson who talked a lot about sort of you know different aging genes and
[00:16:00] some of the early discoveries that had been done around making some sort of you know um these I think they started in worms and looking at particular mutations long long cousins yeah exactly our distant distant distant cousins um and that he went through this sort of this this really deep deep approach and it was coupled by somebody else within the Aging field someone named Leonard haick who he went up and started talking about these Long Live species and you know and he also had the sort of non they call it program non-program but he I don’t want to get in the weeds but it was the first time my attention was just grabbed and it hasn’t stopped I mean just like why do we age how do we age is it inevitable and then you look across just sort of the beastiary right and you have you know a friend Steve aad wrote this book called methusa Zoo there’s incredibly longlived really vibrant species and so many lessons to be learned and then so once I got into it
[00:17:00] and I started really studying older adults and I started really working with them and you know that these it’s almost Universal and that it can be really terrifying and it’s almost like the problems like this functional decline it’s almost unseen we take it for granted we see it everywhere and we just stop seeing it um and so I think really looking at some of these things these you know these processes these new opportunities you know is there really something that we could do to drive change and really help a group of not just group of people I mean my goodness aging is us it’s everywhere it’s success for sure you know I I would say as I talk to you and George church and David Sinclair and Eric verden and many of the rock stars in this field it’s interesting that the idea of talking about uh impacting aging slowing it stopping it even potentially reversing it would have been heresy 5 or 10 years
[00:18:01] now I think it’s the hottest topic out there would you agree with that I would have to agree absolutely you know and that there is in equal parts a lot of you know championing championing if I can get that word out and you know there is still it Sparks um both excitement and I would say still Springs a little bit of fear you know that there are a lot of people concerned about unintended consequences and then there’s others within the field who just think you know poo poo can’t be done can’t be done and and also so much of our society is predicated on aging and dying right I mean it’s the it’s the business plan it’s the business plan of most religions you know not not going to get into religious debate here but you know um it’s part of it uh social structure of of retirement and uh Social Security and I mean it’s just embedded so much into our lives and most people don’t realize that you know normal human aging let’s put let’s go back to what we as humans evolved 100,000 years ago normally you
[00:19:03] would have been pregnant by age 12 or 13 you’re a grandparent by TW 26 or 27 and before we had McDonald’s and whole food and you know food was abundant the last thing you wanted to do to perpetuate your genes and your species was take food from your grandchildren’s mouth so you would die so the average human lifespan for most human history was like 30 and and we see that now physiologically uh from hormone levels from your thymus from stem cell populations in your body you know you’re at Peak Health in your late 20s to 30 and then it’s sort of like this slow and steady decline we want to change that flatten out that curve yeah so you’re absolutely right so a couple of really big things that you said there really really important right is that um really critical so you know so so one I’ll push back just a little bit is that I know that there’s been a lot made of the sort of like this altruism right is that did we evolve towards altruism that we die
[00:20:01] out so that our our kids and grandkids can live I don’t know that that’s really where aging comes from I think that it’s almost like a byproduct is that we do what we have to do to have children we procreate once that natural selection Drive goes then sort of the force declines and a lot of what we experience of this deterioration it’s limited by again the things that used to kill us which most of those things our aging process directly relied so we call that that intrin capacity for aging that intrinsic process is directly related to the extrinsic things that used to kill us and so whether it’s predation illness injury I’m a woman I would have died in childbirth like let’s just you know let’s just go there that was just too energetically costly to keep this whole system working if I was going to die anyway and so we’ve had in the last 100 years just remarkable remarkable things happen where our traditional medicine and Public Health right clean water yep
[00:21:01] sanitation you know lower infant mortality lower maternal pation of milk absolutely trauma care as well you know if you were in an accident say you’re bucked off a horse you know 200 years ago likelihood of death was pretty high we now keep people less dead and so let’s less dead X prise I like that yes yes we have done that really well and you know and even so and all the public health measures have kept us a little healthier and so you know we are living JL shansky calls it this which he’s another guy if you haven’t had him on oh my goodness Peter he’s a hero of mine and so he talks a lot about this like we’re living the longevity Revolution you know we don’t recognize it because it’s our lifespan we don’t see it but you know our great grandparents great great grandparents lived to 48 early 1900s median lifespan was 48 years old in the US it’s now 78
[00:22:00] and we just failed to see this huge accomplishment and I want to make it8 In Those Years everybody I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that’s very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love company is called Fountain life and it’s a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented Physicians you know most of us don’t actually know what’s going on inside our body we’re all Optimus until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the physician or the emergency room and they say listen I’m sorry to tell you this but you have this stage three or four going on and you know it didn’t start that morning it probably was a problem that’s been going on for some time but because we never look we don’t find out so what we built at Fountain life was the world’s most advanced diagnostic Centers we have four across the us today and we’re building 20 around the world these centers give you
[00:23:00] a full body MRI a brain a brain vasculature an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque a dexa scan a Grail blood cancer test a full executive blood workup it’s the most advanced workup you’ll ever receive 150 gigabyt of data that then go to our AIS and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it’s solvable you’re going to find out eventually will find out when you can take action Fountain life also has an entire side of Therapeutics we look around the world for the most Advanced Therapeutics that can add 10 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers so if this is of interest to you please go and check it out go to Fountain life.com Peter when Tony and I wrote Our New York Times bestseller life force we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain life memberships if you go to Fountain life.com back/ Peter will’ll
[00:24:02] put you to the top of the list really it’s something that is um for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family the CEOs of my companies my friends it’s a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans go to fountainlife decomp it’s one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners all right let’s go back to our episode yeah agreed I know I I I want to give our listening audience a little bit of insight about what this x prize go to the prize we can talk science we should have another we will we will for sure this is a this is a subject that people like and so if you’re a moonshot entrepreneur out there if you’re in biology and health if you want to go for this largest X prize ever here it is $101 million up for grabs and Jamie you know all they have to do to win the money is oh my gosh so
[00:25:01] if you’re out there my moonshot team are you ready get your pencils we just launched this so you better start looking us up online um xise X pr.org that’s right go to the site get registered we have an intent to compete out please sign up for it our winning team of the $11 million x prise healthspan you must demonstrate that your therapeutic treatment restores muscle cognitive and immune function and that this is a minimum of 10 years but a goal Peter’s exponential a goal of 20 years and you have to show that in person’s age 65 to 80 and the therapeutic treatment that you give it has to take a year or less so we’re going to be measuring that function before we’re going to be measuring it again at one year and you have until that time to really move the needle what we’re not going to tell you is what to do and so you can bring us anything all
[00:26:02] right so this can be a drug that can be a new drug it can be a repurpose drug it can be a new combination of either new or repurposed it could be a biologic it could be a gene therapy you could be looking at a cell therapy or a vaccination you might even have a device maybe you’re working with some kind of fasting mimicking diet or other nutritional approach um and you can do one of those alone or in combination what we’re not telling you is what to do um what we’re asking you to do is to play by these rules if you want to be considered for an award and the awarding is indexed right so we’re looking at you have to show an improvement in function and not not one but all three again that’s muscle cognitive and immune function let’s talk about why those three and then we I’ll if you don’t mind I’ll peel the onion on the on the competition rule so you can explain them a little more in in detail so um I I’ll just I’ll mention muscle we
[00:27:02] have a a $10 million bonus prize around a muscular distrophy called fshd and I’m going to use this as a as a uh digression to tell a little bit about the history of this prize if that’s okay with you Jamie please do I’m just so happy that you built this yeah well so the very first comp convers conversation I had was after the space flight prize some 15 years ago was a conversation um with uh with Aubrey de gry and Peter teal and it was Runing a longevity prize and we couldn’t figure out what the prize would look like if we had to wait 30 years for it to be awarded or 20 years for it to be awarded so that was difficult 5 years ago a gentleman by the name of Sergey young um who is a a partner with me in my bold longevity Venture fund and super proud of what Serge’s built um he put up a half million dollar to try and kick off this idea of a of a longevity prize again and
[00:28:03] that was the money we used to sort of design and develop the prize and it was a conversation with George Church at Harvard Medical School who’s one of the most um prolific uh in entrepreneurial uh you know biotech faculty out there he’s amazing um uh and he said rather than longevity what you really have to look at is functional reversal because I don’t care what your aging clock says if you feel better if your systems are working better you can measure that in the now and they’re probably FDA approved endpoints and and so we said a true aging uh therapeutic if it works in one system it’s likely to work in other so let’s look at three and I met a guy named chip Wilson uh many may know Chip’s company it’s called Lululemon he founded it it um amazing entrepreneur
[00:29:00] and philanthropist and Chip has this uh uh muscular destrophy fshd um and he became the first major sponsor of this prize he put up a quarter of the prize money and a $10 million bonus if your therapeutic uh can impact muscle and help his particular disease so we have $101 million for the health span X prise Health span and 10 million for this F HD bonus prize this muscular distribute bonus prize and and so we set muscle as one and you know one of the biggest issues around aging is sarcopenia uh the loss of muscle and a lot of people my dad included um fell in his mid 80s um broke his hip that put him into the hospital developed pneumonia and then passed away and we see this over and over again if you have muscle weight wasting and you trip while walking and you break a hip or pelvis um
[00:30:04] it really is a beginning of the end it’s really challenging so how do you maintain muscle function was one of the biggest things where do you want to go next you want to go to immune or cognition yeah I want to I want to sort of Follow that thought I think that’s really great so actually that’s my intro to aging was exactly around that so I started looking at the the neuromuscular determinance of functional Decline and um that was my graduate work and then follow that into more systemic sort of multifunction and really focused on physical dysfunction Frailty disability and um and know that those are you know really incredible drivers and those are some of the things that are so meaningful to people so we can do a deep dive in some of these others one thing I want our audience to know especially teams out there which I really hope you compete I will track you down so again so when we’re talking about muscle this is function but it’s also it’s not single
[00:31:01] Dimension right and so we’re talking about it can be muscle is kind of broad so it also means like Fitness so you know whether that is going to be like a cardiopulmonary kind of thing like a VO2 max or could be like a six- minute walk something like that that requires that you have to move you have to walk it requires endurance we’re also looking at strength and power as well as that muscle mass component so again we’re looking at multiple measures of this so you can’t just get one measure and call it good we’re making this hard okay guys so um what we are putting out and you should link to it on the website is you’ll go in there there’s going to be a competition guideline that’s an initial guideline set but you can link into it and you can see a menu of suggested tests that we’re going to be refining with your input so please join us in this so again muscle physical function is one of those so important we put the we’ll put the link into the uh to the show notes and again express.org or X
[00:32:01] pri.org healthspan um and I think you made an important point when we launch an xprize we we announce it with a set of guidelines versus the final rules and we about a six-month period where uh the world gives you feedback um I’m so happy to have you because I get to draw the arrows and the praise bring them my way guys yeah radically I yes it’s not me getting the feedback it’s you as the as the executive director and uh and and you have an amazing uh endpoints committee um who are guiding you here uh and and so then we’ll refine it get the feedback what did we miss what did we get right what get wrong and then we’ll announce the final rule set um that will guide uh the agreements we have with the teams so that’s muscle uh you know every everybody body who’s getting older I think their biggest fear is cognition
[00:33:00] it’s losing their mind more than anything else yeah so I think this is actually the perfect segue so that you know the three systems what one of the reasons that I was really excited and really made the move to xprize and delete this prize is because it was function forward and that it’s you captured the essence of Aging meaning that it’s not one system and that I think by making this based on function rather than disease it really gets to the heart of what health is health is more than the absence of disease and so we’re taking this very holistic look where we’re looking at physical function what we’re calling muscle right we’re also looking at cognitive function because as Peter said like the things that worry us and actually lead to disability these are sort of the three Horsemen right is that inability to physically participate in our life inability to mentally participate in our life whether that’s memory there’s also some something we call Executive functioning so that’s like can I keep
[00:34:00] track of multiple things at the same time not just what my memory goes which we think about with Alzheimer’s but there’s also many many other components of this whether it’s a general slowing or just a gap or where I can’t I can’t do two things at the same time anymore um and so these are some of those really core functions that are really essential and participating in life and then the third I don’t think I need to tell anybody in the world right now after going through an an international pandemic how important our immune function is is that one of the things we learn through pandemic where our older adults those over the age of 60 and 65 or people that had something like comorbidity we already had some kind of a chronic illness um which is much more frequent in older adults um is that those were the ones that were preferentially targeted by this pandemic and so you know what we’ve really started learning is that we need to do what’s called host directed therapies to improve our immune systems again if we
[00:35:02] target that aging biology we can improve our immune function and become more resilient in the face of many different challenges including the next pandemic whatever it is and so these are the three most critical pillars and they’re not independently tied to any single disease so what we’re talking about is aging what we’re talking about is health and that we’re developing therapies of any kind and it can’t be just one it has to be all three so that we’re sure we’re not just going after a single process yeah beautifully said uh Jam also remember remind us that you know your immune system is not just for uh an infectious disease your immune system protects you against cancer as well your IM system we’re all we’re all developing cancers all the time it’s just normally our immune system finds it early and zaps it um and if your immune system weakens or if you have immune exhaustion as they call uh it increases the rate of cancer y um
[00:36:00] and the I want to emphasize one other part with this that I think is super super critical is that these three really go together and they get at something you know we haven’t talked about the economic impacts yet and that I think that’s really important and so when we think about aging right is that um you know we we often I think you know I think there may be a misperception with this prize is like oh we’re going to launch this prize and we only want rich people to live longer and that they’re going to have this huge divide by setting the prize up this way and looking at function what we’re really going after is population level change right so right now in the US for every 10% increase in the fraction over the of the population over the age of 60 um it actually the GDP the gross domestic product that that it actually goes down um just just under 6% and so in the next years we’ve
[00:37:01] actually already had an increase um of of more than that and so we’re looking at really major changes and what they think most of that loss of GDP is due to is actually uh it’s it’s a loss of Labor Supply and so if we’re looking at things that can possibly impact function we’re talking about these are the things that could actually keep people active in their communities whether or not working in sort of a for-profit position or staying at a job per se but they’re still participating they’re still able to take care of their kids their grandkids they’re working they’re doing something um because it’s not just whether that individual stays in the in the labor pool working but it also means that they’re less dependent on a caregiver who might have to leave work to take care of them a family member a child a niece a nephew and so this is really critically important is that these are the things that will improve function and keep people engaged
[00:38:00] active healthy participating that’s the goal absolutely you know the numbers um I guess it was it was you know the publication here David Sinclair is one of the co-authors and it was it was also was supported by Oxford and and Harvard here that uh adding just one year to the global life expectancy on the average is worth $38 trillion to the global economy and it’s like in less you know both increased productivity and also decreased spending on on medical health yeah I mean it’s a massive massive impact and I think one of the things that is true for this prize and true for all X prizes is it’s around Equitable um impact globally our hope is and and the structure of the competition is that these these Therapeutics are not going to be you know you know million dooll uh treatments eventually uh as you imp as you offer these treatments to uh
[00:39:00] Millions hundreds of millions and billions of people um the price comes down uh massively and becomes available and what we truly want is uh increasing Global Health span you know there’s a there’s a lot of people who argue and I just want to get to the to the heart of this one second that say oh my God we already have too many people on the planet you know we have overpopulation issues why do you want to have people live longer there’s a lot of people and we can talk about these individually um uh but I want to talk about the pro and the con for a second then come back to the rules here I mean I’ll just mention off the bat uh increasing Health span um is about keeping people in the game longer people retire either because they’re in pain they’re tired or they’re forced by policy to get out but imagine at 65 if you are vibrant you have the most
[00:40:01] contacts ever you’re excited to contribute and excited to you know start your next startup or do whatever you want um it is a huge positive impact on society and and people who are concerned about about population let me just give the stats because I know these numbers well 50 years ago the average globally number of children per family was over five children per family it was like 5.4 um the replacement number is 2.1 uh 2.1 children per family is the average to keep the population level we’ve gone from like 5.4 down to 2.3 right now and most of the world China Japan most of Europe the United States is below the replacement level and so you know we’re possibly going to have one of the world’s uh you know a problem on the flip side not enough labor to sustain our global economy actually that’s correct that’s
[00:41:01] one of the biggest concerns and so you know the US certainly were on that trajectory other countries are already grappling with it you know Japan many other countries where it’s you know they have had major demographic changes and so that’s why you know globally both the UN and the World Health Organization they have named this the decade of healthy aging and it’s exactly for this reason is that there are many countries right now that don’t have the labor needed the people within that labor Supply to support the number of persons who are actually retired and needing care and support it’s already happening and this isn’t just for you know really wealthy countries already the countries that are actually going to see the most change in the next say 10 20 30 years those are our lower and middle income countries we need Solutions now that are available to support this really major Global demographic shift we’ve already seen some of it in our country other
[00:42:00] countries are just coming on board um we have changed what human aging looks like and we need to change it more so that we have support available and options available let me ask you uh who can compete for this x prise um who can who can register as a team anyone anyone anyone I want people from everywhere jumping in this this is a great opportunity I mean it could be from our nonprofit foundations academic in uh in investigators um from any country um it could also be commercial for-profit companies so this could be somebody in the biotech space that might already actively be working on Therapeutics I think would um actually help and benefit aging this could be from groups working in other disease categories I know of some folks that working in cancer oncology that may have some things that could be repurposed or reconceptualized toward aging there are also some active
[00:43:00] companies and also Academic Teams that have been working on pieces as you know in the US there’s been a huge huge increase in the amount spent for research on Alzheimer’s disease trying to find a cure trying to find a treatment is that you know there may be opportunities there that maybe some of those drugs some of those compounds might have effects well beyond cognition and they just need the incentive to actually try them because we need options for AG more holistically and this is a chance to do that so again we expect anybody the important part of EX prise one of the things that brought me here and I think it’s so Central to ex prise this Mission and it’s really dear to my heart is it’s decentralized the next great idea could come from anyone anywhere I love that you know one thing important to point out for those is X prise makes no claim on a team’s intellectual property um this is non-dilutive capital that a team gets uh our our job is simply to uh
[00:44:03] support promote help uh hopefully hundreds of teams get attention um and uh hopefully as part of this just like we did with the original space flight X prise and we’ve done with other X prises also pave the regulatory path um so work with in this case the FDA and Regulators around the world uh to be supportive of the kinds of strategies and approaches that are coming here so that’s a really great thing and so these two actually go hand in hand so when I just mentioned a little bit ago that you know we invite anyone maybe biotech companies groups that are out there that are already working in this space maybe they’re developing things around aging so I’m going to tell you something crazy Peter so there are some companies that have been working on Aging developing Therapeutics around aging and um and I talked to one of them recently and I was like well what would you think would you think about competing in this prize I did this a few months ago before they had an opportunity to start really
[00:45:01] letting this digest and um and one of their uh founding CEOs said no because there’s no commercial incentive for us to actually do anything towards aging because there’s no regulatory pathway there’s nothing there so we’ll just keep developing our drugs and working on them in this rare disease that rare disease this rare disease because even though they were at their heart targeting the biolog of Aging they saw this as a Fool’s game um because there’s no one here being the champion to bring everyone together to force our you know and it’s not really forcing the FDA they’re receptive they want to help but they need us to bring it to them and it’s too large of a challenge for any one company or any one academic group to do it on their own and so again this could be from anyone anywhere and the goal is to link these groups together develop common resources and actually work together create change this is a radically collaborative effort we’re
[00:46:00] putting out an initial guideline we’re telling you what we think and we’re asking for input everybody gets to be part of this with us we are democratizing science in the field of Aging you know just to remind people you for you know you read about SpaceX and blue origin and relativity space now and Virgin Galactic and all of these companies and you say you think about commercial space flight and Commercial human space flight is an everyday activity and you can go and buy a ticket right now when the X prise originally got uh thought up in ‘94 and announced in may of 1996 that was not the case by any means the regulations didn’t exist people were not investing in this it was before all of these companies got started and the X prise really lit the fuse on commercial space and and and made it a much more rational investment and created the regulatory uh framework that has launched this commercial space flight and we want to do the same thing here in the field of Health span extension um there’s 100 well you know
[00:47:03] uh I’m very proud to have raised $141 million for this competition it’s the largest amount of capital Ever Raised for an ex prise yay wow Peter that’s incredible I and I believe enough in this that I’ve you know put in uh Millions personally into this competition the first X prise I’ve backed um and uh as I mentioned chip Wilson was our our largest first prize sponsor and then we’ve had people putting in a million bucks up to 40 million bucks and it’s our largest group here let’s talk about um uh how this uh so how this money gets distributed uh 30 million is for operations there’s a lot of of testing has to be done 10 million is up for this fshd prize small pitch there 30 million for operations that might sound like a lot this is a lot to run and so any of our partners out there if anyone’s out there maybe you’ve got a great idea a great biomarker a great
[00:48:01] system something you want to ask us about we’re not closed feel free to call us for in kind support yeah yeah we’re we’re going to be uh partnering with companies to do uh testing in the cognition immune and muscle space and a whole bunch of biometric testing along the way and we’ll be announcing uh Partners um uh in in uh epigenetic testing and genome testing and uh in blood biomarker testing and so forth and this is a global competition so we’re going to have to be doing this around the world but there’s 101 million up for grabs for the primary segment of this prize and unlike win or take all which we have done in the past we’re we’re doing this a little bit differently and I’m excited about it would you lay out how that 101 million is is uh is there for teams to go after okay so this is great so again we have the 101 million
[00:49:00] this is one of the most common questions that I’ve had since we’ve launched Peter is people want to know are we just giving is it a winner take all is it a one prize one shot and no because that’s really not the spirit right that this is meant to get people in the field and keep them there um and so I think one of the brilliant things that that Peter and some of the early developers on this is to find a way to distribute this money and so again it is a competition and so this requires that you have to come into this with some funding on your own to do the earliest stage those first two years that’s going to be a lot of um you know qualifying submissions you have to turn in paperwork to us we have to understand the Therapeutics that you’re working with and the screening process that you have um and we’ll do some evaluating based on that um at that point it’s it’s going to be um in the in the early about right around 2-year Mark for us which is going to be in early 2025 we’ll look at those qualifying
[00:50:01] submissions and there’s going to be the first $10 million distribution um that awarding is going to go to 40 teams will be given some money that 10 million will be distributed um so that’s about $250,000 a team and we know that you know depending on where you’re testing from that may or may not be a lot for you but we wanted to make sure that we at least distributed money to encourage people keep them going keep them invested in this and it’s a token to keep moving more teams than 40 can continue but we’re only doing the awarding at that point and another about year and a halfish after that point into 2026 we’re going to be Distributing again that next Milestone award at this point teams will have had to go in to do at least some early clinical trials work and so this is making sure that they can use the protocols that we’re going to recommend um are comfortable and have the regulatory paperwork necessary um and a
[00:51:00] clinical trial Center that they can can support their work or we can help partner them with network with folks within our alumni and Team Network that can help them along the way and so then that’s that next $10 million distribution so again now we’ve given away 20 million that next 10 million is given to 10 teams those 10 teams will use that $1 million each to at least see their one-year clinical trial the clinical trials will run and again we’re going to be asking these teams they’re going to be testing function that’s muscle cognitive and immune function we need them at the beginning at Baseline they’ll give whatever that therapeutic intervention whatever their team solution is one year later those clinical trials are run again you have to test those same things again muscle cognitive and immune function we take that in also with some of the safety data that you collect um you know any kind of event reporting or
[00:52:01] symptoms we’ll look at dropouts or adherence or anything that’s related to that that will support the awarding but our awarding is based on change in function and that you have to show a functional Improvement um and we break down that 101 which remaining at this point is 81 because we given away 20 now we have the 81 if you can show that the improvements in function in one year are enough to offset it’s equivalent to a 10year um improve or decline it would it’s enough to offset the 10e decline so you have to have an improvement in magnitude this is equivalent to 10year that is uh well the awarded the team will be awarded 61 million if you can show a 15-year functional Improvement that’s 71 million if you can show again this is Peter so I thought 10 years three systems was the most insane thing I could think of Peter is exponential and so this is the exponential goal for
[00:53:00] 81 million is that you have to show a 20 year the equivalent of a 20-year Improvement uh in all three systems for 81 million and just to be clear um uh the highest level wins the money so if you showed 10 but someone showed 15 the team who got 15 wins it um and and this competition is going to run for 7 years from launch uh at the end at the end of seven years is uh hopefully uh we have a winner by that point that’s exactly right and so yeah 2030 is that’s our goal period um and so this gives our teams actually and having that amount of time yes it takes time to run trials the other thing it takes time to get the regulatory paperwork done and make sure that you have the resources and the network building and that we can actually begin to work and lay that groundwork around um you know what is possible for the future um and so that’s
[00:54:00] why we have this duration is it just takes time to run these trials and it takes time to build the community and lay what we want to make this again it’s not meant to be a prize a oneandone we give the money away and everyone goes home is that this is meant to make Global lasting change we’re about an impact over the years I’ve experimented with many intermittent fasting programs uh the truth is I’ve given up on intermittent fasting as I’ve seen no real benefit when it comes to longevity but this changed when I discovered something called prolon 5day fasting nutrition program it harnesses the process of autophagy this is a cellular recycling process that revitalizes your body at a molecular level and just one cycle of the 5-day prolong fasting nutrition program can support healthy aging fat focused weight loss improved energy levels and more it’s a painless process and I’ve been doing it twice a year for the last year you can get a 15% off on your order when you go to my
[00:55:01] special URL go to prolon life.com p r l nli f.com back/ moonshot get started on your longevity Journey with prolon today now back to the episode yeah you know uh one of the things that’s important for people to realize is that we’re doing this competition now because For the First time ever small teams can do what only the largest corporations and Health Care Systems could do before in fact I think can do more given the use of AI and what we’ll see before the end of this competition before before 2030 is we’ll see you know quantum chemistry and Quantum computation coming online uh Gene therapies chrisberg Technologies Gene writing all kinds of things coming on um at exponential rates and uh and I think the biggest opportunity for impact on the planet is going to be for adding Health onto
[00:56:00] people’s uh life let’s talk about one second the definition of lifespan and healthspan I think it’s important people to realize get no yeah yeah go for it okay this is a really good point this is a really really good point okay so lifespan right so this is you know a lot of people when we talk about the surprize they see only sort of the lifespan numbers and lifespan is super important right it’s it’s how long you have lived it’s the total duration of your individual life um it’s your chronology how many birthday candles you have put on your cake um and it has really not a lot of connection necessarily to your health condition birthday candles whether or not you can actually count them or not yeah whether you can blow them out even see them exactly right so Health span is different okay so Health span is the period of Life spent in good health um so you know classically we think about this is when you’re free of like major
[00:57:00] life-threatening diseases or disability um so it really it emphasizes the quality of life rather than just the duration so again we want to add life to your years this is really the key component here um and you know and one of the reasons this is such a key component because this is really where the Gap is Peter I know you’re aware of this and I’m sure that our listeners if you made it in this far you probably know this we talked about that longevity Revolution at the beginning of the show I’m just drawing a loop back did you know so in the US right we’ve gained 30 years in the last 100 years we’re living 30 years longer do you know what’s helping so the World Health Organization count something called the health adjusted life years do you know how long we’ve expanded that no no in the last 20 years zero right now there’s a gap between our health adjusted life years and our lifespan of 12 Years meaning that we’ve
[00:58:01] extended life and we might have wiggled Health a little bit but if we actually quantify it there are a 12year period that people are living in poor health low quality of life poor function and disability that’s staggering that’s not the goal that’s that’s not the goal it’s not the goal to have you slobbering in a wheelchair unconscious it’s uh it’s how do we yeah how do you have the energy the cognition the mobility the Aesthetics the immunity to to enjoy enjoy those those years of life that’s right traditional medicine has yeah traditional medicine has life made us less Dead We want to make us more alive I love that the less Dead exerprise uh you know I want I want to talk about you know uh one more one more subject for folks here which is you know people complain about uh extending lifespan or longevity and
[00:59:02] they bring up a number of things and I went out to my Twitter verse to get people’s objections I normally I have a community of folks many of you here listening who love this and follow this with me again I I you know put out my book uh uh longevity practical Playbook um which is available uh for free if you’re listening on my DM andis.com longevity or can go to Amazon to get a hard copy um but the the interesting uh list of things and I’m just going to run through them um the first is Bored people say I’m going to be bored I’m going to be bored if I lift to 100 or 120 and I’m like really um so I think that’s interesting uh you know my answer to that is we’re going to have ai and VR and BCI and all kinds of extraordinary uh uh new ways to engage in the world um
[01:00:02] and hopefully boredom is the last thing you have to worry about um I don’t know how you feel about that no I actually I think that’s completely right you know and I have talked to others in the field is that you know we’re going to have to come to terms with this we are living longer and I think our current approach has actually left that feeling is that people don’t know what to do with those added years right so I think that’s where that’s like oh I’m going to be bored oh I don’t know what to do or they you know even within medicine there’s this sort of paliative approach to care and it and it’s really it’s we’re looking for things that actually Empower people is you don’t have to be bored maybe go back to school is there an opportunity for lifelong I think is there engagement there’s so many things I think there’s travel and education and I think what happens is people conflate being in pain and and having low energy um with those later years and the hope is that there’ll be increased Vitality okay so another thing
[01:01:02] um is uh this the sense of immortal dictators I have this I have this debate with Elon that you know people need to die in order to make room for uh new innovation and if uh if the CEOs and the leaders are uh are still alive and living longer that um that we only have change when people when we have turnover and people die and I call for that I mean you know listen the the head of the head of lock Martin and uh and Boeing uh or G General Motors uh you know and toota didn’t have to die for SpaceX and for Tesla to come along you know you just need better uh better entrepreneurs and better technology and I think we have Revolution all the time and you know we are going to have without question the societal checks and balances against um you know evil dictators and Tech that doesn’t work
[01:02:01] well yeah so I mean societal evil dictators but you know I’ll get Clue you in so there’s a there’s been a side conversation around this on the academic side around tenure where there’s you know so many more new PhD candidates coming up and you know we can’t do anything if we know nobody retires because you know because of tenure and so there’s all these fear there’s fear fear fear Fe fear fear but instead so we can either do two things we could either not talk about it or we can talk about it and just sort of allow a place for engagement and you know and is this a potential risk like you know I’m with you Peter I certainly don’t think so but I also realize that I am an eternal optimist but this is a great chance this is why these prizes are so incredible is that they take some of these things that might be scaring people in the background about unintended consequences like the evil dictator syndrome or whatever that may be which I also don’t agree with um or I’m going to be bored
[01:03:01] or any of these things and they allow us to have a public Global conversation about them we can talk about them by doing this prize you know bring them out have pros and cons come to a Team Summit come to a biomarker summit we’re going to have a lot of opportunities and channels to communicate and talk about this um is that you know we are going to have to talk about reskilling we’re going to have to talk about you know turn you know whether it’s turnover or just new opportunities for engagement like this is an opportunity that we get to have and it’s I think it’s beautiful yeah the other the other side of uh tenure and evil dictators is till till till death do us part in marriage you know institution of marriage was it you know was it was it was it specifically you know designed to to last for 100 years I don’t know so maybe maybe we’re going to have we are going to have as people live longer
[01:04:00] we’re going to have to have change right whether it’s when you retire and Social Security and maybe marriage becomes a renewable contract and maybe tenure goes away but um you know uh interesting uh overpopulation we spoke about the issues of overpopulation I wouldn’t hit on that again um but uh another is inequality you know is this simply for the wealthy you mentioned this and that’s not the objective yeah no no it’s not the objective but again this is one of those we talk about unattended consequences this is the purpose of having a global prize rather than have a company or group of companies sort of do this their way right is that we want companies to participate be a part of a team be part of the conversation you know um and I I certainly for me the goal is not to and again it it’s not an awarding criteria but it’s part of a judge cons consideration as we talk about we don’t call it cost we’re talking about accessibility right because even if you have a cheap drug if it’s not something
[01:05:01] that can be given and say you know in in other sort of lower middle income countries that might not have access to the appropriate Refrigeration or the blister packs aren’t quite right in order to get you know people can use them or the dosing schedules are too complex you know so there’s a lot of things that when we think about access that’s really very important one of those consider is cost but I think one of the key features when we think about cost Peters you said it sort of two ways right so there’s the importance is that if we get these out there the costs will eventually come down the next thing is that if we actually can go about this the right way and that we can actually go forward and we can get an indication and again whether you call aging the disease or not that’s not my dog fight right that’s that’s not mine I let other people handle that but the goal is still the same is that if we can get this through whether as a disease or a non- disease indication which the FDA is interested in driving forward that makes
[01:06:02] Health reimbursable right and so that automatically is going to start bringing that cost back down so that we can talk about access and delivery and if we can couple this with additional Innovations and say Peter you and and I last month we’re at some really interesting conversations around you know decentralized um medic essential medication so is this an opportunity that we can really Drive change in that area and I think one of the other key things is that when we’re talking about function we’re automatically going to talk about improving the health and the lives of those who actually experienced those declines perhaps earlier either as accentuated or accelerated aging and those are the people who really need it you know aging is essentially it’s the great equalizer everyone gets here eventually um some of us might get here a little bit sooner and if we make action now and we actually can work on
[01:07:00] some of those access issues and work on the regulatory issues collectively the idea is that we can actually create that Level Playing Field and give Innovation and innovative solutions to the populations who need them the most this could be the great equalizer if we do it correctly and out in the open transparently and with a great Global partnership so uh there you have it our uh Health span X prize 101 million actually it’s 111 million if include the bonus prize up for grabs our mission is stimulate uh moonshot entrepreneurs um if you’re not in the biotech or medical field uh maybe you’ll organize a team go and find the smartest people you can pull together a team to compete for this you know we had some 6,000 teams uh pre-register for Elon $100 million carbon X prize uh and then down to some 1,400 register teams by the way I I have
[01:08:02] to tell the Side Story here why is it $101 million not a100 million prize um I it was in a conversation with chip Wilson uh who put up the first uh uh you know 25 million and then a $10 million fshd bonus prize and said huh elon’s prize is 100 million how about we make it larger I said you want taking an extra million he said sure and it became $101 million prize I I just want to again go to x pri.org check out the ex prise Foundation go to express.org healthspan uh you can get the guidelines there you can register as a team you can find out what else we’re doing in the X prise world uh for me it’s uh it’s really moonshot heaven for moonshot entrepreneurs Jamie what else do you want to add here oh my gosh all I want to say is you know come join us right so this is this is us we’re democratizing science we’re encouraging people to
[01:09:02] rethink about your relationship to aging and the community around you who is aging um and that you know all I want is for everyone to show up knock on our doors actually go on to our website again that’s express.org make sure you go on there get that intent to compete sign up your team um if you need help or access linking up to teams we’re building that Global Community feel free to reach out this is again this is a radically collaborative effort and I am so excited to have you join me on the journey a pleasure I want to thank um Evolution our largest sponsor uh chip Wilson and solve fshd uh and a myriad of individual sponsors uh who put in from a million to $10 million each uh for supporting this EX prise for our our advisors our uh our endpoints committee uh the teams who have already registered to compete we
[01:10:01] have some amazing individuals uh top in their fields who are part of this competition go and and check it out and uh and Jamie you and your team uh you are playing all out on this and you’re you have an amazing amazing team that’s actually I think you’ve got an all female team uh which is pretty amazing not intentional but oh my gosh we have an incredible like a Powerhouse team of women so I’m joined I should have given them a shout out way earlier in addition to the incredible Folks at xprize which has the most amazing support prize design advancement Partnerships great teams um but my immediate team I also have joined by a medical Deputy Dr Laura getts I have a senior epidemiologist and data analyst and her name is Dr luren Lauren peerpoint um and we have the amazing delali which I recommend anybody who needs information or contact she’s our prize manager if anything gets done
[01:11:00] on this prize she is our get it done gal and then of course our CEO anua Ansari who funded my first ex prise uh back uh 23 years ago then flew to the space station as the first private female astronaut and 5 years ago came back to bless us all as CEO of the ex prise I serve as executive chairman which means uh I get to be her pain in the ass and her partner uh and uh anyway thank everybody for listening she was a cell for me coming out from Academia she’s my Shiro I just love her yeah Shiro I love that all right uh that’s it the $101 million hell span X prise out to change the world uh excited uh for everybody who’s going to compete and uh to add 20 healthy years onto my health span I’m looking forward to it all right everybody Peter grateful for you thank you thank you Jamie take care now I want to take a moment to tell you about abundance 360
[01:12:02] my yearound leadership Mastermind for people who want to go big create wealth and uplift Humanity it’s Singularity University’s highest level program we are a global community of entrepreneurs CEOs investors philanthropists who have come together based upon a set of shared beliefs I’m going to share with you a few of these core beliefs beliefs if they resonate with you consider applying to the membership we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to solve the world’s biggest problems second we believe it is possible to create wealth while at the same time uplifting Humanity third we believe that by the end of this decade 2030 we will be extending the healthy human lifespan by decades next we believe that the day before something is truly a breakthrough it’s a crazy idea so embracing crazy ideas is critical to Innovation next we believe that exponential Technologies create
[01:13:00] abundance and finally we believe that an entrepreneur’s mindset is your greatest asset if hearing these has you thinking that sounds like me and I want to be part of this community then consider submitting your application to a 360.com that’s a36c we let in about 50 new members every year in advance of our Summit between March 17th and 21st these spots sell out fast so if you want to get in consider applying early to increase your chance 83. has everything you need to know I hope you’ll join me it’s an extraordinary group of entrepreneurs and we’d love to have you now back to our [Music] podcast