Longevity Science Is Having Its Moment --- Incoming president's picks for the country's top health jobs have ties to the antiaging field now edging into the mainstream

"Longevity enthusiasts are ascendant in the second Trump administration.

The incoming president's picks for the country's top health jobs have ties to the longevity field and in some cases have been customers themselves. Scientists and entrepreneurs say they hope the new administration will make it easier to develop antiaging treatments and boost research funding.

Such changes would further expand a once-fringe industry now edging into the mainstream. The field still has plenty of detractors, but longevity practices from supplements to IV drips to off-label drug use have become more common, boosted by health podcasters, fitness bros and some traditional doctors.

"The science around aging has hit a tipping point where it's too big and too exciting for any government to ignore," says James Peyer, chief executive of longevity biotech Cambrian Bio and board director of a longevity biotechnology nonprofit.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, said on a 2023 podcast he follows an antiaging protocol, adding that he takes too many vitamins to list. On an episode of Joe Rogan's podcast that same year, Rogan told Kennedy that he had taken NAD+, a supplement popular among longevity enthusiasts, and Kennedy replied, "I did all the same stuff."

Bryan Johnson, the biohacker whose extensive longevity regimen is featured in a new Netflix documentary, says he is eager to help make America "the healthiest country in the world" and that Kennedy is a friend. Johnson, whose motto is "Don't Die," posted a photo of himself and Kennedy on X days after the presidential election with the caption "MAHA," short for Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" slogan.

Jim O'Neill, Kennedy's proposed deputy, was founding board member and former chief executive of SENS Research Foundation, a nonprofit that funds antiaging research. He said in a 2020 podcast interview that the group was trying to develop drugs to "reverse aging, not just slow it down," and criticized regulatory roadblocks to medical innovation.

Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary, Trump's pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration, has also won support from big names in the longevity field. Longevity scientist David Sinclair said on X that Makary was "a great pick" and reposted a Fox News interview in which Makary said there was scientific evidence supporting reversing or slowing the aging process.

Kennedy, O'Neill and Makary didn't respond to requests for comment.

Longevity researchers, entrepreneurs, and health enthusiasts who follow antiaging practices have a long wishlist for an administration they hope will be friendly. That includes helping fast-track the drug approval process, boosting research funding and incentives, and emphasizing preventive care.

Dave Pascoe, a biohacker who competed in Bryan Johnson's contest to see who can age the slowest, hopes to see more government support for nontraditional therapies like peptides and stem cells, and for aging itself to be treated as "an avoidable, pathological condition."

There is no drug approved by the FDA to treat human aging, and the agency doesn't currently classify aging as a disease. Longevity researchers would like the new administration to make it easier to bring such drugs to market. 

Studies measuring whether a treatment could extend a healthy lifespan are expensive and can take decades to conduct.

"There is an opportunity to reduce the time to the clinic by, in my estimation, at least a half," says David Gobel, co-founder and chief executive of the Methuselah Foundation, which spun out the longevity nonprofit that O'Neill led, now called the Lifespan Research Institute.

Longevity scientists are also working on identifying so-called surrogate endpoints for aging, which are biological markers that can indicate a treatment is working without having to wait decades to find out.

More detailed regulatory guidance would help companies design and run trials more quickly and spur innovation, says Alex Colville, who co-founded longevity-focused venture capital firm age1.

Some are hopeful that under NIH director nominee Jay Bhattacharya, who currently heads a research center at Stanford focused on the economics of health and aging, more funding will go toward research on the basic biology of aging, rather than specific age-associated diseases. More than 70% of their grant dollars fund research on various forms of dementia, according to an overview of the agency's 2025 budget.

Eric Verdin, CEO and president of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, says a good place for the agency to start would be to fund clinical trials like an ongoing study of whether the diabetes drug metformin can help fight aging in non-diabetic people. Metformin is one of the already-approved drugs many biohackers take off-label in hopes of living longer, healthier lives.

"Repurposing already approved drugs is one way that you can potentially find things that have additional benefits that aren't going to bankrupt the system," says Matt Kaeberlein, co-director of the Dog Aging Project and chief executive of healthcare technology company Optispan." [1]

1. Longevity Science Is Having Its Moment --- Incoming president's picks for the country's top health jobs have ties to the antiaging field now edging into the mainstream. Janin, Alex.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 15 Jan 2025: A12.