In this episode of Optispan, host Matt Kaeberlein speaks with Dr. Jamie Justice, Executive Vice President for Health and Executive Director of the $101 million XPRIZE Healthspan competition. Justice explains how this unprecedented global challenge aims to fast-track interventions that can measurably extend human healthspan within a one-year clinical trial. The conversation spans the origins of the prize, what qualifies as credible science, why functional outcomes matter more than biomarkers, and how the competition is reshaping the future of aging research.

Key Points:

The XPRIZE Healthspan competition is a $101M global effort to identify interventions that can measurably improve human function—muscle, cognition, and immunity—within a year. Justice outlines a rigorous, science-first approach that filters out hype while encouraging bold, credible innovation. The project aims to redefine how aging research is performed, validated, and translated into real-world health impact.

• What XPRIZE Healthspan Really Is: Justice leads a $101M global competition focused on improving human healthspan—not lifespan—by demonstrating measurable gains in muscle, cognitive, and immune function within one year.
• A Global, Open-Door Challenge: Over 700+ teams from 71 countries have registered—from biotech companies to high-school students. Any credible idea can enter, provided it can be safely tested in people.
• The Types of Therapies Competing: The top 40 semifinalists naturally fell into four equal categories:
1. Drugs (new & repurposed)
2. Biologics (gene therapy, plasma-based, cell therapies)
3. Nutraceuticals & supplements
4. Multimodal approaches pairing lifestyle tools (exercise, heat/cold therapy, circadian rhythm interventions) with devices.
• From Wild Ideas to Credible Science: The competition has attracted everything from clinically sound meditation protocols to bizarre proposals such as pheromones from religious sacraments or fish-based aging reversal theories—most of which fail due to lack of scientific plausibility.
• Why Functional Outcomes Beat Biomarkers: Early ideas centred on epigenetic clocks as endpoints, but XPRIZE shifted toward functional outcomes—strength, cognition, and immune resilience—because these matter most to people and have meaningful regulatory pathways.
• Winning Requires Demonstration, Not Promises: Teams must run real-world proof-of-concept trials, recruit participants, secure IRB approvals, and show their intervention meaningfully improves function equivalent to 10–20 “years” of better health based on population models.
• Building the Field, Not Just a Competition: Justice emphasises “solution-agnostic” design: the goal is not to pick winners in advance, but to reshape regulatory norms, public perception, and accelerate the pipeline for future longevity therapeutics.
• A Parallel Prize for Biomarker Innovation: Beyond interventions, XPRIZE is planning a companion biomarker prize to validate better measures of healthspan. Trials will bank samples using common protocols to support discovery science.