Alex Zhavoronkov Maps a Path Forward for Longevity Medicine

For thousands of years, humanity has pursued the dream of extending life. Across civilizations, the search for an “elixir of life” has appeared in mythology, literature, and cultural traditions, reflecting a universal desire to overcome the limits of human biology. Yet beyond the ancient fascination with immortality lies a more fundamental medical question: can humans not only live longer, but live better?

That question is now moving from the realm of imagination into the laboratory. Modern longevity medicine is no longer focused on the unrealistic pursuit of eternal life. Instead, it seeks to understand the biological mechanisms of aging and develop interventions that can delay age-related decline, prevent chronic diseases, and extend healthspan.

At BIO Asia–Taiwan 2026 in Taipei, Alex Zhavoronkov, Founder, CEO and CBO of Insilico Medicine, argued that longevity medicine has entered a pivotal stage of transformation. In an exclusive interview with GeneOnline, Zhavoronkov discussed how the convergence of GLP-1 therapies, AI-powered drug discovery, aging biomarkers, and next-generation pharmaceutical strategies is driving the development of longevity therapeutics and redefining how medicine approaches aging.

“Right now there are multiple factors that converge for the benefit of longevity biotechnology,” he said. “The number one factor is that now we actually see the first potential longevity therapeutics.”

Why Aging Has Become the Next Major Healthcare Challenge

Zhavoronkov mentions the rise of longevity medicine reflects a fundamental shift in healthcare priorities. Over the past century, medical innovation has transformed many once-fatal conditions into manageable diseases through advances in prevention, diagnostics, and therapeutics. As medicine continues to extend survival, however, a new challenge has emerged: addressing the biological processes that make people increasingly vulnerable to multiple chronic diseases later in life.

He argues that this represents the next frontier of medicine. Rather than treating diseases individually after they appear, researchers are increasingly exploring whether the underlying mechanisms of aging can become therapeutic targets themselves.

Zhavoronkov pointed to HIV as an example of how medical progress can redefine a disease. “Thirty years ago, we had the AIDS epidemic,” he said. “Nowadays it is not a death sentence. It is a diagnosis for a manageable condition.” Similar transformations have occurred in oncology, where targeted therapies and immunotherapies have improved outcomes for many patients with previously devastating cancers.

However, he believes medicine is now confronting a different category of challenges. Many of today’s greatest health burdens are closely associated with aging biology itself, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. “Those are diseases of aging,” he noted.

This has shifted the scientific question from treating individual diseases toward understanding the shared biological mechanisms that drive age-related decline. Longevity medicine aims to determine whether these mechanisms can be modified to delay disease onset and preserve human function.

While socioeconomic development, improved nutrition, public health measures, and better living conditions have significantly extended human lifespan, Zhavoronkov indicated these approaches alone may not deliver another major leap forward. “In some cities, life expectancy has already reached something that I would call a plateau,” he said, pointing to regions including Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Taiwan.

“You can probably squeeze an additional four or five years from socioeconomic benefits,” Zhavoronkov said. “But you cannot squeeze another decade.” Achieving another decade of healthy and productive life, he argues, will require interventions that directly target aging biology.

“You will need to go into longevity therapeutics,” he said.

GLP-1 Drugs Changed How the World Views Longevity Medicine

The rise of GLP-1 therapies has become one of the most influential developments reshaping the future of longevity biotechnology. Originally developed for type 2 diabetes, these drugs later expanded into obesity management and broader metabolic health, challenging the traditional boundaries between disease treatment and approaches aimed at improving healthy aging.

From his perspective, GLP-1 therapies stand for a defining example of how future longevity therapeutics may emerge. Rather than being created as anti-aging drugs from the outset, these medicines entered clinical practice through conventional disease pathways before revealing broader implications for human health. “They set the example for the entire field,” Zhavoronkov explained. “The drug has been developed for a disease. It has been developed for type 2 diabetes. Later it got repurposed for obesity.”

The significance of GLP-1 therapies extends beyond their original indications. Their success has highlighted how medicines designed for a specific disease can eventually reveal broader effects across interconnected aspects of human biology. He believes these therapies may influence multiple dimensions of health, including metabolic function, joint health, and potentially neurological outcomes. 

In spite of their biological effects, Zhavoronkov also emphasized another dimension of GLP-1 therapies: their potential ability to influence human behavior. By altering appetite and food preferences, these medicines may reshape lifestyle patterns associated with long-term health. “You lower the desire for bad things,” he said. “But good things you still desire. You still want to work. You still want to go out with your spouse.”

While the long-term impact of GLP-1 therapies continues to be explored, their market success has already reshaped how investors and pharmaceutical companies perceive longevity-focused innovation. These medicines have revealed the potential of therapies that address fundamental drivers of human health, creating opportunities that extend beyond traditional disease categories.

“If you want to have the next GLP-1, you need to figure out longevity. You need to understand the fundamental biology of aging,” he explained. He believes the next generation of blockbuster medicines will come from a deeper understanding of aging mechanisms, enabling therapies that address multiple age-related conditions rather than treating diseases one at a time. “If you had a longevity therapeutic at the scale of GLP-1, it would be much more profitable,” he noted.

A Pragmatic Path Toward the First Longevity Therapeutic

Despite the growing enthusiasm surrounding longevity medicine, Zhavoronkov considers its future will not emerge by moving outside the pharmaceutical system, but by advancing within it. Although aging biology has become one of the focuses of scientific research, aging itself is not currently recognized as a standalone regulatory indication for drug approval. Therefore, companies developing longevity therapeutics must first establish clinical value through specific diseases while investigating whether their interventions can also influence the underlying biology of aging.

“The pathway to the market is the same,” he stated. “You have to get approval for a disease. Then you repurpose into a chronic biological process.” Rather than viewing this regulatory reality as a limitation, he sees it as the most practical route for bringing longevity therapeutics into mainstream medicine. The field must first create therapies that deliver measurable clinical benefits while building evidence that these interventions may also affect broader mechanisms associated with aging.

GLP-1 therapies offer an early example of this evolution. Their journey from diabetes treatment to obesity and metabolic health illustrates how medicines developed for specific diseases can eventually reveal wider implications for healthy aging. 

AI, he argues, could accelerate this transition by enabling researchers to identify therapeutic opportunities that previously required decades of scientific exploration. While GLP-1 medicines emerged through a long process of incremental discovery, AI-driven platforms may allow the next generation of longevity therapeutics to generate faster. “For GLP-1s, we are talking about a very long journey from there to today,” Zhavoronkov said. “Now if I want to do the same thing with our drug candidate, we discovered the novel target in late 2019. Today is 2026, and it’s already in Phase III.”

This philosophy reinforces Insilico Medicine’s development strategy. It focuses on creating therapies for established diseases while exploring whether they can also influence biological aging. One example is Rentosertib, Insilico’s AI-powered therapy for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a disease he describes as “Alzheimer’s of the lung” because it predominantly affects older adults.

“Besides signs of reversing lung function loss, if you actually see a substantial advantage (in longevity), that is a massive thing,” he said. Diseases such as IPF represent opportunities for him. They provide a practical pathway toward validating whether therapies targeting age-related diseases can also become the foundation for the first generation of clinically supported longevity therapeutics.

The Rise of Dual-Purpose and Triple-Purpose Therapeutics

The concept behind Rentosertib reflects a broader shift in how future medicines may be designed. According to Zhavoronkov, the next generation of therapeutics will not simply focus on treating individual diseases, but will increasingly aim to address multiple biological processes simultaneously.

This approach represents a transition from conventional drug development toward what he describes as dual-purpose therapeutics—medicines that pursue regulatory approval through a specific disease indication while potentially influencing the underlying mechanisms of aging.

He also pointed to ISM4808, an HIF-PHD inhibitor licensed by Taiwan-based TaiGen Biotechnology from Insilico Medicine, as another example of this emerging strategy. The program is being developed for anemia associated with chronic kidney disease (CKD anemia), a well-established clinical indication. However, the biological pathways involved may also provide insights into broader mechanisms associated with aging and declining organ function.

Such programs illustrate how longevity medicine can evolve within the existing pharmaceutical framework. Rather than waiting for aging to become an independent drug indication, companies can develop therapies for recognized diseases while generating evidence that these interventions may have wider implications for healthy aging.

Yet he believes the future could extend more than dual-purpose medicines.

Looking ahead, Zhavoronkov envisions triple-purpose therapeutics—drugs designed to address disease, influence aging biology, and support emerging areas of human technology. One example involves therapies targeting inflammatory pathways such as NLRP3. As invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) continue to develop, implanted devices may trigger neuroinflammatory responses, creating potential applications for drugs that protect neural tissue while also benefiting patients with neurodegenerative diseases and age-related conditions.

“If you do invasive BCI, you cause neuroinflammation,” he stated. “I have three triple-purpose drugs that might work for BCI, that might work for aging, and might work for neurodegenerative diseases.”

This concept signals a broader transformation in pharmaceutical innovation. Future medicines may no longer be defined solely by the diseases they treat, but by their ability to intervene across interconnected biological systems.

Measuring Aging Remains the Key Challenge

Developing a longevity therapeutic is only the first challenge. Another question is how to prove that a treatment can actually influence human aging. Unlike conventional diseases with established diagnostic criteria and clinical endpoints, aging is a complex biological process involving multiple interconnected systems, with no single universally accepted measurement standard.

“There is no standard and there will never be,” Zhavoronkov said. “Any data that changes in time can be used to predict your age to some extent.”

Rather than viewing this complexity as a limitation, he sees it as an opportunity for AI-driven analysis. By integrating diverse biological datasets, including imaging, molecular profiles, and clinical information, AI models may uncover patterns of aging that are difficult to identify through traditional approaches.

Among emerging technologies, he believes proteomics currently provides one of the most promising foundations for clinical development because it directly connects molecular changes with disease biology. “The best marker you can use today in the context of a real clinical trial is proteomics,” he noted. However, Zhavoronkov emphasizes that biomarkers must support, but not replace clinical evidence. “If you are to study aging in the context of a disease, you must be very transparent about it,” he stated.

The First Longevity Therapeutic Could Redefine Medicine

Despite his confidence in the potential of longevity medicine, Zhavoronkov remains cautious about making claims that exceed available evidence. “I only make claims when I have a peer-reviewed paper published,” he emphasized.

Behind this scientific restraint lies a strong conviction that the field is approaching a historic inflection point. Based on the progress of AI-driven drug discovery, aging biology, and biomarker development, he believes the first generation of longevity therapeutics may already be within reach.

“I already see that,” he said. “I am already convinced that some of our drugs… we do have longevity therapeutics at hand.”

The defining moment, however, will not come from a drug being labeled as an “anti-aging” therapy. Instead, Zhavoronkov highlights the breakthrough will emerge when a medicine developed through conventional pharmaceutical pathways proves that it can influence biological aging while treating a recognized disease. The first approved longevity therapeutic would represent a pivotal proof point, showing that aging biology itself can become a credible target for pharmaceutical innovation.

Build Through Evidence, Not Hype

For decades, longevity research has existed between scientific promise and commercial uncertainty. While researchers have uncovered increasingly complex mechanisms of aging, translating these discoveries into approved medicines remains one of biotechnology’s greatest challenges.

Zhavoronkov expresses that longevity medicine will not advance through speculation or bold promises, but through the same principles that define successful pharmaceutical innovation: rigorous science, clinical validation, and sustainable development.

After years of advocating for aging research, he realized that ideas alone were not enough to transform healthcare. “You cannot change the world by just talking,” he said. “You actually need to show people.”

Zhavoronkov claims that companies pursuing longevity therapeutics could not rely on scientific ambition only. To earn long-term confidence from the market, they need to allocate resources efficiently, advance credible drug pipelines, and translate discoveries in aging biology into tangible clinical outcomes.

Despite growing scientific interest, longevity biotechnology continues to face a significant investment gap. The hesitation, he explains, is not necessarily driven by skepticism toward the science itself, but by the difficulty of accepting the long timelines, high risks, and uncertain outcomes inherent to drug development.

This challenge, he experiences, is particularly visible in Europe, where a more conservative investment culture has often made investors less willing to support certain biotechnology ventures. This creates a critical bottleneck. “Investors are still very careful about this,” Zhavoronkov said frankly. “They like to hear about it, but they don’t like to invest in it.”

ARDD 2026 Builds the Global Hub for Longevity Drug Development

As longevity research moves closer to clinical translation, the field faces a defining challenge: building the ecosystem required to transform discoveries in aging biology into medicines.

This is the vision behind Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) conference, the conference co-founded by Zhavoronkov to connect scientists, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology innovators, investors, and policymakers around the shared goal of advancing longevity therapeutics.

Now entering its 13th year, ARDD has evolved alongside the longevity field itself. While early discussions focused primarily on understanding the mechanisms of aging, the next phase requires a sharper focus on drug discovery, clinical validation, and commercialization. Reflecting on this transition, Zhavoronkov observed that the conference has become increasingly centered on translation: “In the past, the focus of the conference was very distributed. This year the focus is very razor sharp. It is pharma, investment, biotechnology.”

ARDD 2026 will take place from October 1 to 3 at the David Rubenstein Treehouse at Harvard University, Boston. It reflects this evolution by bringing together leaders across the global longevity ecosystem, including executives from Eli Lilly, Novartis, Takeda, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Roche, GSK, and Novo Nordisk, alongside researchers from institutions such as Harvard Medical School, Stanford University, and Yale School of Medicine. Investors and biotechnology leaders will also participate, creating a platform where scientific discoveries can connect with the expertise, capital, and industry capabilities required to develop future therapies.

The conference is also becoming more selective in its scientific focus. “We only allow academics this year who really have a chance to discover a drug,” Zhavoronkov explained, highlighting ARDD’s shift toward supporting research with clear translational potential.

Longevity research has existed at the intersection of scientific possibility and clinical uncertainty for many years. ARDD represents the field’s transition from understanding aging biology toward building a practical pathway for developing medicines that can intervene in the aging process.

“We have a common enemy,” he emphasized. “That common enemy is aging.”

The future of longevity medicine will not be defined by the pursuit of immortality, but by extending the years people can remain healthy, independent, and productive. As AI, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical innovation converge, the path forward is becoming clearer. “It will be bigger than generative AI, bigger than the internet. This is about life itself,” he said.

For him, longevity medicine is no longer a distant aspiration. It is a path being built through validated discoveries, one step at a time.

Author

Steven Chung

紅杏枝頭春意鬧固然是眾人所追求的風景，但我願意說，青蘿拂行衣更能湧生感嘆。 願在海量晦澀的生醫資訊中，為您點亮一座心燈塔。鐘煌翔