Which Anti-Aging Ideas Actually Work? XPrize Healthspan Is Testing The Best Longevity Innovations

XPrize Healthspan is testing the best ideas for slowing aging. —Elena Noviello—Getty Jamie Justice admits she has no poker face.

As executive director of XPrize Healthspan, a philanthropic and corporate sponsored competition, Justice oversees one of the most buzz-worthy science competitions today.

The contest, launched in 2023, attracted nearly 200 applicants from groups around the world who think they can help people to live not just longer lives , but healthier ones.

When the 15-member judging panel met in early summer to pick the top 10 teams who would continue on in the seven-year competition, Justice excused herself.

“I couldn’t be in the room because my face shows everything,” she says, since she became familiar with each of the teams and their various approaches to extending human life.

Read more: TIME's 2026 Longevity Leaders Both in the scientific community and the commercial market, there is no shortage of ideas—from legitimate, rigorously developed approaches to more fantastical schemes—for a fountain of youth .

XPrize Healthspan exists to bring some order to that chaos, and legitimacy to the process of developing and, most importantly, testing ideas in longevity.

Applicants for the prize, which has a total purse of $101 million, allocated in segments throughout the seven-year competition, included teams from academic research institutes as well as biotech and startup groups.

All had to follow a few basic rules; they had to show early promise in human studies that their approach could improve health in three critical areas: muscle function, brain function, and immune function.

All teams were judged based on standard measurements of these three functions that XPrize committees of experts had specified, to ensure that all projects were evaluated using the same metrics.

The judges announced the top 10 projects on Aug.

11.

“This is where I get the most excited, when things get really sort of dirty and ugly,” says Justice, who spent time researching geroscience at Wake Forest University before coming to XPrize.

“You’ve got biohackers selling you this, and you have a bro guy over here that wants you to take so much protein that you’re going to die.