Prediction Not checkable as stated
Fortney: Near-term therapies will add 10 to 20 years to human life
“I think the near-term therapies are going to add, say, 10 to 20 years.”
What-if
Targeting aging directly could extend average human lifespan to 113 years
“That would get the average lifespan up to 113 by targeting aging directly rather than targeting individual diseases one at a time. And what's really key too is this would be an additional 30 years of healthy life.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Current longevity clinical trials could add 10 to 20 healthy years
“Three different therapies are already in the clinic today. So as I mentioned, there are drugs targeting senescence, metformin, and there are drugs targeting rapamycin being tested in clinical trials now. And I think that could already add 10 to 20 years of hea…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kristen Fortney argues there is no hard biological limit on lifespan
“Going forward in the future, I think it's a really important point to mention that there is no hard biological limit on how long we can live, and these are a couple really fascinating examples. Bowhead whales, their average lifespan is over 200 years, so they'…”
Assertion Supported
Fortney: Clearing senescent cells in mice boosted lifespan by 30 percent
“And they showed that if you killed senescent cells in a mouse, you could boost lifespan by 30%.”
Assertion Supported
Fortney: NIA tested 30 lifespan drugs compared to 110,000 for cancer
“The National Cancer Institute, the total number of drugs they've given to mice to see if they cure mouse cancer is over a 110,000. The number of drugs that the National Institute on Aging has given to mice to see if they live longer is 30.”
Opinion
Fortney: Statins function as anti-aging drugs in current medical practice
“Statins, which basically are an aging drug now. The indication is, oh, you're over 40, have some statins.”
Insight
Fortney: Longevity startups should target small initial indications to avoid huge trials
“Even if we came up with a drug that we thought slowed aging tomorrow, and I thought it would be wonderful for diabetes, I probably wouldn't want to go out and pay for a diabetes trial, right? That's a very competitive space. You need a huge, expensive trial wi…”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Fortney: Small molecule longevity drugs will likely emerge first
“I guess I'm expecting small molecules to come first because that's what pharma is used to. You know, that's what the, we have all the models to make that work. And the space of chemicals has been so unexplored. So I think there are going to be other repomycins…”
Opinion
Extending lifespan is the most powerful way to address chronic disease
“So I work on extending human lifespans because I believe this is the most powerful way to address chronic disease.”
Assertion Partly supported
Curing all cancer would only add four years to average female lifespan
“And scientists have estimated that if we could cure all cancer, that would only get her up to 85. That would add only four years to the average lifespan.”
Assertion Supported
Phase IIb trial shows rapamycin reduces elderly respiratory infections by 30%
“And they just published their Phase IIb data this summer, showing that Rapamycin can improve certain aspects of immunosenescence. So as you get older, your immune system doesn't work quite so well, and people who took rapamycin had 30% fewer respiratory infect…”
Assertion Supported
Deleting senescent cells can boost animal lifespan by up to 30%
“If you could delete these cells, that could boost lifespan as much as 30%, ah, and healthspan as well.”
Assertion Supported
BioAge identified a blood protein linked to longer human lifespan
“One of the targets we're working on now is a protein that circulates in your blood, and we discovered that humans who have higher levels of this protein live longer, are less frail, and are protected from disease.”
Insight
Fortney: A real biomarker must predict future health outcomes
“A real biomarker has to predict the future.”
Disclosure
Fortney: All BioAge discoveries stem from decades-old biobank samples
“So we can take these samples that are 20 years old, and we can query them with all the modern technologies that measure hundreds of thousands of variables, and then integrate that with our electronic health records to try to predict their future health course,…”
Assertion Supported
Fortney: Rapamycin extended middle-aged mouse lifespan by 30 percent
“Even though they've only tested 30, there's already been one success rapamycin that came out of that, which is a very exciting discovery. Basically, the first molecule that came out of this large-scale program, they started to feed it to mice at middle age, an…”
Assertion Supported
Fortney: Exceptional human longevity is a heritable genetic trait
“There are groups of people now who have exceptional longevity, which is a heritable genetic trait.”
Assertion Supported
Age is the primary underlying risk factor for heart disease and cancer
“Now, these are fundamentally very different diseases, different symptoms, different progressions, but they share the same underlying driving risk factor, which is how old you are.”
Assertion Partly supported
Average US healthspan is only 62 before first chronic age-related disease
“The average healthspan is only 62, and that's the age at which you get your first chronic age-related disease.”
Assertion Supported
Only 1% of the $37B NIH budget funds basic aging research
“So in particular, the NIH, which is sort of all the spending on, on research, on medical research, only about one percent of their thirty seven billion dollar annual budget goes to research on basic mechanisms of aging.”
Assertion Supported
Retrospective study shows diabetics taking metformin have lower cancer rates
“So metformin is a first-line therapy for diabetes. Millions of people have been taking it for decades, and there was a paper that came out a few years ago where they looked retrospectively and saw that, hey, those diabetics that were taking metformin for decad…”
Assertion Contradicted
Fortney: Three-quarters of healthcare costs fund chronic elderly care
“Well, frankly, right now, three quarters of annual health care costs go towards chronic diseases in the elderly, and that's adding, those are years of sick life.”
Assertion Supported
Biological interventions can reproducibly extend mouse lifespans by up to 30%
“So we can make mice live about 20 to 30% longer.”
