As the XPRIZE Healthspan central laboratory, the Stein Institute at UCSD will standardize biospecimen and biomarker testing for trials assessing muscle, cognitive, and immune function.
The UC San Diego Stein Institute for Research on Aging will serve as the central laboratory and biorepository for XPRIZE Healthspan, a seven-year competition with a $101 million prize purse. The laboratory will help separate measurable functional improvements from changes in experimental biomarkers.
This effort is partly prompted by the thriving longevity marketplace, which includes biological-age tests, supplements, and drugs promoted as ways to slow or reverse aging, often without evidence of meaningful clinical benefit.
The competition guidelines call for one-year Phase II trials in adults ages 50 through 90 who lack major life-threatening disease or disability. Teams may enroll 40 to 200 participants, with approximately 100 anticipated. Trials must include controls and should use randomization and masking when possible. The one-year trials are not designed to establish longer survival or durable prevention of age-related disease.
Investigators will assess muscle endurance with the six-minute walk test and measure lower-body power. To evaluate cognitive health, they rely on the CANTAB computerized battery, which measures memory, attention, executive function, and processing speed. For immune health, the protocol incorporates iAge and IMM-AGE as key biomarkers. While researchers currently associate IMM-AGE with immune status and mortality risk, the competition acknowledges a critical distinction: improving this specific biomarker score does not necessarily guarantee better clinical outcomes for patients.
UC San Diego will standardize specimen handling, maintain the biorepository, conduct multi-omics and immune-aging analyses, and provide judges with blinded laboratory results.
XPRIZE’s minimum prize threshold requires improvement in muscle, cognitive, and immune measures equivalent to the decline expected over 10 years in reference populations. It does not mean making participants chronologically 10 years younger or adding 10 years to their lives.
Physicians should distinguish functional improvement from biomarker movement, as they are not interchangeable. Additionally, findings from comparatively healthy participants may not apply to frail or medically complex patients. Finally, winning an XPRIZE award does not establish FDA approval or prove routine clinical utility.
The materials reviewed do not identify the final immune measure, provide every response threshold, state whether San Diego patients will participate, or explain whether investigators must publish unsuccessful trials.