Aging science has gotten much better at describing who appears to be aging faster or slower. What medicine still lacks is a reliable feedback loop: a way to tell whether something we do is actually changing the biology that drives age-related disease.
Dr. Nir Barzilai argues that solving that measurement problem could turn geroscience from an interesting field of research into something doctors can actually use: measure where you are, intervene, measure again, and learn what works.
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What We Cover:
- What centenarians reveal about living longer and spending less time sick
- Why changing one hallmark of aging can affect several others
- How TAME was designed to test metformin as an anti-aging drug and to convince the FDA to treat aging itself as an endpoint—and why it failed to get off the ground
- Why metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists, and some osteoporosis drugs are being studied as potential gerotherapeutics, or anti-aging drugs
- How FAST is searching existing clinical trials for biomarkers that change when an intervention affects aging biology
- Whether aging needs continuous monitoring or can be meaningfully tracked a few times a year
🎙️ About the Guest:
Dr. Nir Barzilai is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research and a professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he directs the Institute for Geroscience.
📍What Dr. Nil Barzilai & Mike Haney discussed:
- 05:10 - Aging is a condition, not just a label
- 05:59 - Why aging is what drives disease
- 08:19 - Should we call aging a disease?
- 10:20 - Why the species may have a ceiling around 115
- 14:34 - Why changing one hallmark of aging changes the others
- 23:08 - Metformin was anti-aging before it was a diabetes drug
- 31:55 - Centenarians live longer and spend less time sick
- 40:12 - How TAME tried to make aging an FDA endpoint
- 48:17 - Metformin, SGLT2s, GLP-1s, and osteoporosis drugs as gerotherapeutics
- 52:26 - FAST: finding biomarkers that actually change with treatment
- 56:49 - Whether aging needs continuous monitoring, or a few checks a year
- 1:01:16 - Where behavior still fits once we have anti-aging drugs
🔗 Helpful Links:
- Hallmarks of Aging: An Expanding Universe (Cell, 2023) Paper
- Compression of Morbidity Is Observed Across Cohorts with Exceptional Longevity (JAGS, 2016) Paper
- Metformin as a Tool to Target Aging (Cell Metabolism, 2016) Paper
- Geroscience-Guided Repurposing of FDA-Approved Drugs to Target Aging (Aging Cell, 2022) Paper
- Biomarkers of Aging for the Identification and Evaluation of Longevity Interventions (Cell, 2023) Paper
- FAST: Finding Aging Biomarkers by Searching Existing Trials FAST Initiative
- ARPA-H PROSPR / FAST award ARPA-H FAST project
Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/HbeGjwCw6vk
Find us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1
📲 Connect:
Connect with Dr. Nil Barzilai on X: https://x.com/NirBarzilaiMD
👋 Who we are:
Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health.
Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.
