Justin Q Taylor

Out in MIT Technology Review A new contest pits competitors against each other in a race to biological youth And I'll be joining them. By Jessica Hamzelou This week, I officially signed up for an unusual competition. One that rewards competitors for getting younger. I recently turned 40, and I don’t need reminding that both time and my chronological age only tick forward. But this game is focused on competitors’ biological ages—figures that are meant to provide a better way to measure the age-related health of our organs and bodies. Over a six-month period, around 500 of us will try to reverse our biological age as measured in a bunch of different ways. There’s even a leaderboard! The winners will include the person who shows the greatest difference between their chronological and biological age, as well as the person who manages to reverse their biological age the most. The competition is the brainchild of the neuroscientist and physician Christin Glorioso, who is also founder and CEO of NeuroAge Therapeutics. The company offers tools to track brain health and aging and is running a trial to find out if biological brain age can predict the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.Glorioso says she has several goals for the Younger contest. The first, she tells me, is to “explain to the world what aging clocks are.” Regular Checkup readers will be familiar with these tools, but for the uninitiated, they are basically designed to measure biological age. Many measure chemical signatures that form a layer on top of our DNA and seem to change with age. But others might involve looking at proteins or lipids in blood. Some are designed to measure functional health, while others predict when a person will die. There are more than a hundred clocks out there, and they probably each capture a specific aspect of the biological process of aging. These clocks are proving very useful for scientists, who use them to study aging and development in humans and many other species. But using them to estimate the biological age of an individual person is more controversial. They’re just not good enough for that yet. Part of the problem is that we don’t really understand what each clock is capturing. Glorioso hopes that data collected through the Younger contest might help answer that question. She’s hoping to generate “the world’s most comprehensive clock dataset. Some longevity clinics try to get around the limits of biological age testing by using multiple clocks. That’s this competition’s approach too. Full article: technologyreview.com/2026/10… Thanks to our partners: Raghav Sehgal, PhD, Ryan Smith, Ray Mak, Owen Phillips, Ph.D., Nikolina Lauc, Melissa Keinath, Ph.D., FACMG, Paul Coletta, Icey Roongpiti ✨, David Furman

Venture capitalist, @RonjonNag , and I discuss what we are doing to try and win the #Younger competition. Big thanks to our partners and sponsors @TruDiagnostic , @Vero_Bioscience, Ray Mak, @glycanage , @R42group, @MyViome, @CoreViva, Lutanen Health, @BuckInstitute, @LongevityGL, @LifespanNews, @RapaNews. Stay tuned for other competitors talking about their protocols for #Younger including Eric Verdin and Paul Coletta.

It was an honor to contribute a chapter on brain aging to the new Springer Nature Frontiers of Longevity Science book edited by @agingdoc1 . I'm excited to be a part of bringing longevity science to the world.

Curious about the #younger biological age contest? Competitors have 6 months to make their brain, organs, face, and function (grip strength, sit to stand, VO2max) younger measured with tests developed at MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. You can compete from anywhere in the world and the testing is deeply discounted. Come learn more about the contest and how to win it from the people who created the tests: Ryan Smith (Founder of TruDiagnostic) Raghav Sehgal, PhD (Yale Faculty) Ronjon Nag (Stanford Faculty, Inventor, VC) Ray Mak (MGH professor, physician, FaceAge inventor) RSVP: luma.com/6xhp4gzo Younger Website: neuroagetx.com/events/younge…

Introducing #Younger, a six-month contest to measure and reverse biological aging 🧬 Twin studies suggest only ~1/4 of how long we live is genetic. 💪 The rest is shaped by how we live, which means most of it is something we can act on. 🕑 Younger is both a fun competition and a public health project. The goal is squaring the curve, compressing illness into fewer, later years instead of only adding time. 📈 One analysis values a single year of slowed aging at about $38 trillion to the US, and delaying dementia alone would save Medicare and Medicaid hundreds of billions. Here is what we measure and the teams behind it 👇 🧬 Epigenetic and organ-system biological age with TruDiagnostic 📸 FaceAge, biological age from a photo, with Ray Mak at Harvard 🩸 Organ age from blood proteins with Vero Bioscience, Inc., from Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray's lab at Stanford 🔬 Methylation clocks with Dr. Raghav Sehgal, PhD 's lab at Yale 🧠 Cognitive testing with NeuroAge Therapeutics, plus VO2 max, grip strength, and a sit-to-stand You can compete from anywhere in the world, and a single entry bundles all of this for well below what the tests would cost bought separately. We also guide you with personalized recs, webinars, and discounted services and products. We have some longevity celebs competing and speaking at Younger including Eric Verdin, Paul Coletta, @RonjonNag , and Steve Horvath Full post: drglorioso.substack.com/p/in… Sign up for Younger: neuroagetx.com/events/younge… #Longevity #BrainHealth #HealthyAging

A New Study in 495 Centenarians Points to a Brain Aging Biomarker You Probably Have Not Heard Of Most people know about blood pressure for heart disease and blood sugar for diabetes. Far fewer know that there's now a blood biomarker quietly building a case as one of the more informative readouts for brain aging. A new JAMA Network Open paper followed 495 Japanese centenarians for 17 years. NfL (neurofilament light) predicted both cognition and lifespan more reliably than the classical Alzheimer's-specific markers did in this cohort. 🧬 NfL is released into blood when axons get damaged from any cause, including aging, stroke, MS flares, concussion, and neurodegeneration 📊 Each 1 SD higher NfL meant 36% higher mortality, even after adjusting for kidney function and APOE4 🧠 Phosphorylated tau did not predict mortality after full adjustment in this cohort. Only NfL did. 💉 Plasma NfL tests now run $200-400 at Labcorp, Quest, and several direct-to-consumer services This does not replace amyloid and tau testing. It adds a different lens. Plaques and tangles are part of the story, but aging, vascular wear, and injury also drive cognitive trajectories, and NfL captures those. This is why brain aging assessment is moving toward multimodal panels that combine NfL with imaging and genetics, each catching what the others miss. Link to full post: drglorioso.substack.com/p/a-… #BrainAging #Longevity #BrainHealth