Matter Bio has been cleared by the FDA for a Phase 1 clinical trial targeting pancreatic cancer. The presentation covers their approach and promising preclinical research in solid cancers including brain tumors, pancreatic cancer, and ovarian cancer.
Here is a recent review on why most of the media reports on recent Cell Press Blue article are flawed: https://felixbast.substack.com/p/the-protein-paradox-why-cutting-protein
XPrize Healthspan's goal is to restore 10-20 years of healthy function in cognitive, immune, and muscle-cardio function.
You can read in more detail about the 10 finalists on page 71 in this report from XPrize: https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/9bc15d1f-8a5c-007d-b507-e3496e85af86/3a7f030f-adbb-4611-9e52-b24485a9e9b7/XPrizeHS_InnoLandscape_Top10_8.6.26_Digital.pdf
The 10 awardees are not the only ones who will take part in the final round. Pages 59-61 list dozens of groups who submitted a finalist application and may still conduct a Phase 2-structured trial with their interventions for the grand prize to be announced in 2030.
New literature review: https://zenodo.org/records/21843358
Three example findings from this paper that I think are worth your time:
1. There's a body mass threshold that determines how species solve the longevity-cancer trade-off. Mammals exceeding 5-10 kg, like humans, elephants, whales convergently repress somatic telomerase and maintain shorter telomeres, using replicative senescence as an anti-cancer mechanism. Small long-lived species like bats and naked mole rats do the opposite: they keep telomerase active and rely instead on robust early-acting tumor suppression (Rb/p53) to prevent hyperplasia. The sharpest version of this: across 15 rodent species, telomerase activity coevolves with body mass, not lifespan. This isn't "telomeres matter for aging": it's that telomere strategy is body-size-dependent, and interventions need to account for which side of that threshold the target species sits on. (Tian et al. 2018; Seluanov et al. 2007)
2. Transposon silencing is a convergent longevity mechanism across three separate lineages and in one case it's causal, not correlative. The piRNA/PIWI pathway suppresses transposable elements, and independently evolved long-lived organisms converge on strengthening it:
- In C. elegans, downregulating active TE families extends lifespan, and ectopic activation of Piwi in somatic cells promotes longevity (Sturm et al. 2023)
- In 20-year-old Macrotermes natalensis termite queens, TE expression does not rise with age at all despite a sevenfold increase in overall gene expression because the piRNA pathway is upregulated with age (Post et al. 2022)
- In Drosophila, the adult fat body runs a somatic piRNA pathway; Piwi mutants show TE mobilization, elevated DNA damage, and reduced lipid stores (Jones et al. 2016)
Three species, three independent labs, and the C. elegans result is an intervention rather than an observation which is what makes this testable rather than merely suggestive.
3. The primary bottleneck for longevity therapeutics isn't finding targets, it's reaching them. The paper calls this a "delivery-before-discovery paradox": dual-AAV prime editing achieves 42% efficiency in mouse cortex and 46% in liver, but only 11% in cardiac tissue. We already have validated longevity targets we can't reach in the tissues where aging hits hardest. Heart delivery, not target identification, is the rate-limiting step and it directly constrains which mechanisms are therapeutically actionable at all.
South by Southwest (SXSW) is a high-profile annual conference that includes discussions on panels in technology and innovation. Another arm also includes creative industries like film. Please create a free account and vote for the following panel proposals. Click the heart on each of the pages to vote:
XPrize Healthspan: https://participate.sxsw.com/flow/sxsw/sxsw27/community-voting-sxsw/page/community-voting/session/1784919142105001Rsut
Cyclarity Therapeutics (Phase 1 trial), Immunis (XPrize semi-finalist): https://participate.sxsw.com/flow/sxsw/sxsw27/community-voting-sxsw/page/community-voting/session/1784820891724001tATQ
Epigenetic Reprogramming (Life Biosciences, others): https://participate.sxsw.com/flow/sxsw/sxsw27/community-voting-sxsw/page/community-voting/session/1784914038586001DtEz