# Megatrends One Year Later – #11: Longevity Science – What I Predicted, and What’s Actually Happening
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“The future is not just extending lifespan, but our healthspan, by treating aging itself.” - Futurist Jim Carroll One year ago, in July 2025, I published Megatrend #11: Longevity Science as part of my 30 Megatrends series. Time to grade myself. So how's the aging-biology story holding up a year later? Better than "holding up" — it's accelerating, and on more fronts than I expected. Senolytics, the drugs that clear out senescent "zombie" cells, are now in more than 80 human trials worldwide, and the dasatinib-plus-quercetin combination just posted real Phase 2 results in chronic kidney disease patients — measurable improvement, not just biomarker noise. Epigenetic reprogramming — resetting cells to a younger state using Yamanaka factors — crossed from mouse studies into people this year. Life Biosciences got FDA clearance in January 2026 to begin Phase 1 human trials of its partial reprogramming therapy for a form of vision loss, and Retro Biosciences started dosing its first human patients with RTR242. Two years ago this was theoretical. Now it's in arms. The pillars I flagged as further behind are catching up faster than expected too. Telomere biology and mitochondrial health — the ones I said were still preclinical — aren't anymore: Klotho gene therapy, once a Yale mouse-longevity story, is now in multiple human safety trials testing cognition and healthspan in healthy adults, and Cornell's mitochondria-targeting peptide (SS-31) is deep into Phase II/III work while a related peptide, MOTS-c, entered its own Phase 2a human trial for metabolic aging in 2026. Verdict: Nailed it, and it's moving faster than the one-year mark usually allows. Every pillar I named — senescence, reprogramming, telomeres, mitochondria — now has a human trial attached to its name. The "longevity divide" I warned about is still the open question: none of this is priced for the average pension yet.

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/08/megatrends-one-year-later-11-longevity-science/