ARPA-H launches new program aimed at extending the healthspan of Americans

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new funding opportunity through the launch of the PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience, or PROSPR, program. The big question that drives the program is, “What if we had therapies to extend healthspan and prevent the onset of age-related diseases?”

ARPA-H PROSPR Program Manager Andrew Brack, Ph.D., says, “the ultimate goal is to extend healthspan—meaning the number of years aging adults live healthy lives and enjoy overall well-being by compressing the frailty and disability that comes with aging, into a shorter duration of time near the end of life.” The PROSPR program builds on foundational work by the National Institute of Aging and will work with industry and regulators to accelerate the testing and availability of new therapeutics targeted at healthspan.

This commitment by ARPA-H is not only an investment in national health, but an impactful economic investment. The number of people 65 and older accounts for 18% of the U.S. population and is projected to increase to 23% by 2054. Considering their increased care needs relative to younger ages, health care costs will increase by 75% if nothing is done to prevent the progressive loss of physical functioning during aging, according to a Pew Research Center Study. It is estimated that increasing the average American healthspan would lessen health care costs due to a combination of fewer medical needs, less reliance on assistance by others, and increased potential for individuals and their family caregivers to remain in the workforce. Because of these and other factors, it is estimated that extending healthspan by one year in only 10 percent of the aging population would reduce costs of U.S. entitlement programs by $29 billion per year and increase value to the national economy by $80 billion per year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Full story and website:

What is fascinating and frustrating for me about the PROSPR program is that we already have low or no-cost ways of compressing morbidity—exercise and attention to nutrition. However, those two “therapies” won’t enrich corporations or the medical establishment.

This is huge. Thanks for sharing @RapAdmin

Each TA is powerful, see below

Does anyone know how big this program is in dollars?

Beyond the dollars this might help a lot with the FDA too.

@adssx perhaps this could fund some of your past efforts

@John_Hemming perhaps you could lobby the UK to do the same?

From the ARPA-H program pdf:

And

And have largely failed to make an impact via public policy efforts for decades. Hence why the “medical establishment” has moved on.

@rickyf @dicarlo2

Guys this is DARPA for health – the approach that helped the world invent the internet, GPS etc

This might be one of the biggest things any government has done for longevity and health extension ever!

And if it might bring us closer to a tipping point moment

TA 2 of the program (see my first message above) seems like it could give us real clinical trials of exactly the type we want even for FDA approved compounds where the patent life is over.

Either our favorites here in the community (Rapa combined with acarbose? Other combo), or if not then other things that managed to outcompete our favorites.

I know “healthspan” is not the same as “lifespan”, but does seem like this could be huge.

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Might also end up having synergies with the 101million dollar longevity XPRIZE?

Thanks for pinging me. It’s amazing. But how much money is invested in this program? Anything below $1bn will be mostly useless.

(I’m not working on repurposing anymore, I have something else in mind, wait and see…)

Not sure about money, I had the same question.

I do think that this can help push the FDA in big ways

And that other spin off effects could be very meaningful

Interesting … I’m intrigued – look forward to learning more

A good podcast on this topic:

Looks interesting

explore how PROSPR plans to accelerate the development of therapies that target aging itself by building the regulatory and scientific infrastructure needed to measure and improve health during aging. They discuss PROSPR’s innovative approaches to in-home data collection, biomarker development, and clinical trial design that could compress decades-long studies into just three years

Again – it seems to me that the potential of this program could be huge – especially when taking account all its ripple effects…

TA2: Repurposing FDA-approved interventions

TA2 will include two tracks, outlined below. Performers will have the option of submitting a
single proposal addressing a single track or combined tracks. TA2 track 2a findings will be
shared with TA2 track 2b and TA1 track 1a for validation in clinical trials. Track 2b funding will
begin in the third quarter of year 1 (Y1Q3). All TA2 track2a and 2b performers are expected to
collaborate with each other throughout the life of the program. Therefore, TA2 track2a and 2b
performers will have Associate Performer Agreement (APA) language included in their
respective award; see Appendix A.
Track 2a (Biochemical markers): Performers will collect clinical data and blood samples from
existing clinical trials where a therapeutic intervention has demonstrated improvements in
multi-morbidity. We encourage performers to consider trials of the following treatments:
rapamycin, metformin, GLP-1, acyclovir, naltrexone, and somatostatin. Performers must have
letters from trialists agreeing to share the stored blood samples for omics analysis. Track 2b
will conduct comprehensive omics analyses on these blood samples to identify biochemical
changes during an 18-month funding period. Throughout the funding period, Track 2a will
collaborate closely with TA1 track 1a and 1b performers to integrate identified biochemical
markers into the TA1 track 1a-developed PROSPR IC score and TA track 1b-developed PROSPR
study design. The biochemical markers identified by Track 2a will be tested by Track 2b in a
Phase 3 clinical trial using FDA-approved drugs to determine whether the biomarkers are
responsive to these interventions.
Track 2b (FDA-approved drugs): TA2 track 2b performers will identify two FDA-approved drugs
with strong safety data and evidence of multimorbidity reduction in humans or evidence of
healthspan, frailty, or lifespan improvement in preclinical animal models and conduct a
decentralized clinical trial collecting TA1 track 1a-developed PROSPR IC at regular intervals.
Track 2b performers will work with the FDA on decentralized clinical trial design and validated
surrogate endpoints for healthspan. Track 2b performers will also share IC data with Track 1b
team during the clinical trial to allow Track 1b to determine whether PROSPR IC is responsive
to pharmacological interventions in humans.

https://sam.gov/opp/05eb7371faa34a47990829b33212ce1a/view

Basically from this program we might have a $100 device at home to measure IC (intrinsic capacity) a composite unhealthy aging score, as well as some FDA-approved interventions that improve it and new ones. Which is what is needed, along with possibility for decentralized trials… I wrote about this here:

But I feel like this is going to fail, people aren’t going to be convinced, it’s going to be done in some crap way by a subpar contractor, with no real expertise (i.e real one like in the Manhattan Project). shudders. It needs the ultimate skeptics like Peter Attia. Mentioning that it will integrate information from other wearables just sounds like a scam? Muh aging score from my Apple Watch!

Interesting that they chose an anti-viral for investigation. Presumably this is as a prophylactic or perhaps to aid the immune system in suppressing existing subclinical infection.

EBV and the probable causality for M.S comes to mind. Shingles and possibly AD. I’ve been thinking about valacyclovir as a prophylactic. Viruses seem to wreck havoc in the body but it’s interesting it might affecting aging or just unhealthy aging.

Have you considered what biomarkers you might track to determine the effectiveness of valocyclovir? Perhaps antibody levels?

I haven’t no, (I misspelled it: should be valacyclovir), but someone reported worsening immune function on it so I forgot about it for quite some time. It needs safety monitoring too it seems then and quite some of personal research. It seems they want contractors to datamine those trials for those drugs. I don’t know the difference between it and acyclovir either. But it’s a positive IMO they mentioned it.