For the first time, a US federal agency is investing on a large scale specifically in therapies against ageing itself: the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is providing up to 144 million US dollars over five years in the PROSPR programme. The funding was announced in February 2026.
The goal
PROSPR stands for “PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience”. The programme aims to increase the number of healthy years of life – the so-called healthspan – and to develop three things for this purpose: reliable biomarkers that measure biological ageing, drugs that influence it, and new trial designs that can demonstrate this. ARPA-H Director Alicia Jackson speaks of a “tectonic shift” in research on healthy ageing and points to estimates according to which even one year less of biological age in the population would save enormous healthcare costs.
The funded teams
Companies:
- Cambrian Bio (up to $30.8 million): is developing targeted inhibitors of the mTORC1 signalling pathway. The related drug rapamycin extends life in animal experiments but, because of its low specificity, is associated with side effects in humans.
- Linnaeus Therapeutics (up to $22 million): is now also investigating LNS8801, an activator of the G protein-coupled oestrogen receptor, in healthy older people.
- Apollo Alpha: is developing oral drugs that cross the blood–brain barrier and are intended to influence energy balance, fat metabolism and inflammation.
Universities: Stanford University, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and University of Rochester.
Why this matters
A fundamental problem of ageing medicine is regulatory: medicines agencies do not yet recognise “ageing” as a disease, and trials with the endpoint “longer life” would take decades. PROSPR therefore relies on measurable intermediate outcomes such as “intrinsic capacity” – a person’s combined physical and mental capacity. If such measures can be scientifically validated, drugs against ageing could in future be tested and approved along a clearly defined pathway.
Note: This article is for general information only.
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