XPRIZE Healthspan is a seven-year competition designed to push aging research beyond incremental improvements. Participating teams are developing and testing interventions intended to restore muscle, cognitive, and immune performance in adults between 50 and 90 years of age. The competition defines success as producing measurable improvements equivalent to at least 10 years of healthier function—and potentially as much as 20 years—within one year or less of treatment. The goal is not simply to increase lifespan, but to delay or reverse functional decline while people remain active and independent.

The NYC-Vita team is conducting a clinical trial that combines lifestyle and pharmaceutical interventions to examine whether immune-system performance can be improved during aging. The study reflects a growing scientific consensus that aging is not governed by a single mechanism. Instead, it emerges from interconnected changes involving chronic inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, impaired tissue repair, altered immune-cell behavior, vascular damage, and declining neurological resilience. By measuring these processes together, the researchers hope to determine whether targeted interventions can produce broad improvements in healthspan rather than isolated changes in one organ.

A central scientific focus of the program is the aging immune system, a process known as immunosenescence. With age, immune cells may become less responsive to new infections and vaccines, while other immune populations can remain persistently activated and promote low-grade inflammation. This chronic inflammatory state, sometimes called inflammaging, has been associated with cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, frailty, metabolic disorders, and reduced ability to recover from illness. NYC-Vita is designed to investigate whether pharmaceutical and behavioral strategies can shift the immune system toward a more balanced and effective state.

The Mount Sinai effort brings together specialists in immunology, neuroscience, metabolism, medical imaging, wearable technology, and clinical investigation. Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, leads the NYC-Vita team and is internationally recognized for her research on macrophages, immune cells that regulate inflammation, tissue repair, and responses to disease. The team also includes Zahi Fayad, PhD, whose work uses advanced imaging and wearable technologies to study biological and lifestyle stressors; Fanny Elahi, MD, PhD, an expert in neurodegeneration and brain health; Thomas Marron, MD, PhD, principal investigator of the NYC-Vita clinical trial; and Ryan W. Walker, PhD, MS, whose research examines metabolic and nutritional influences on healthy aging.

For the study, the researchers are expected to evaluate healthspan using multiple biological and functional measures rather than relying on chronological age alone. Such assessments can include immune-cell profiles, inflammatory markers, metabolic measurements, neurocognitive testing, physical-performance data, and imaging-based indicators of tissue health. Wearable devices may provide continuous information about activity, sleep, heart-rate patterns, and other behavioral signals. Combining these data streams could help researchers identify whether an intervention produces a coordinated improvement across systems or merely changes a laboratory measurement without meaningful benefits in daily life.

“Advancing to the finals of this highly competitive global initiative reflects the exceptional scientific foundation we have built at Mount Sinai and the strength of our collaborative research enterprise,” said Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Executive Vice President of the Mount Sinai Health System. He said the collaboration across immunology, neuroscience, metabolism, imaging, and clinical research could help redefine how healthy aging is understood and promoted.

Merad said the team’s selection as a finalist recognizes both the promise of its scientific strategy and the work of its multidisciplinary researchers. The $1 million award will support the continued development of NYC-Vita and help accelerate investigations into interventions that may preserve physical strength, independence, and quality of life. The program is part of Mount Sinai’s broader Healthspan Program, which links biomedical research with clinical care and aims to translate discoveries about aging into practical approaches for preventing or delaying age-related disease.

XPRIZE announced 20 finalist teams at an awards ceremony in Salt Lake City. Ten of those teams, including Mount Sinai, were selected as Milestone 2 Awardees and will share $10 million in direct milestone funding, with each receiving $1 million. Awardees will also gain access to clinical testing resources intended to speed the evaluation of their therapeutic approaches. The finalists represent the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China, underscoring the international competition surrounding efforts to alter the biology of aging. The contest is scheduled to culminate in 2030, when XPRIZE plans to award a grand prize of up to $81 million. Mount Sinai leaders said the team will continue the NYC-Vita trial while seeking additional collaborators and philanthropic support to expand the research and determine whether improvements in immune health can translate into longer, healthier lives.

Subject of Research: Healthy aging, immune-system function, immunosenescence, inflammaging, and interventions designed to extend healthspan.

Article Title: Mount Sinai Team Advances to XPRIZE Healthspan Finals With Immune-Aging Clinical Trial

News Publication Date: August 11, 2026

Web References:
https://www.mountsinai.org/about/healthspan/research
https://profiles.mountsinai.org/miriam-merad
https://profiles.mountsinai.org/zahi-a-fayad
https://profiles.mountsinai.org/fanny-m-elahi
https://profiles.mountsinai.org/thomas-u-marron
https://profiles.icahn.mssm.edu/ryan-w-walker
https://www.mountsinai.org/about/executive-leadership/nestler
https://www.mountsinai.org/about/executive-leadership/brendan-carr

References: XPRIZE Healthspan competition announcement; Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai NYC-Vita clinical trial and Healthspan Program information.

Keywords: healthy aging, healthspan, XPRIZE Healthspan, NYC-Vita, immune aging, immunosenescence, inflammaging, macrophages, clinical trial, Mount Sinai, longevity research, age-related disease, medical imaging, wearable technology, neuroscience, metabolism

XPRIZE Healthspan is a seven-year international competition focused on extending the period of life people spend in good health. Participating teams are challenged to develop treatments capable of restoring muscle, cognitive, and immune function in adults between 50 and 90 years old. The competition sets a minimum target of reversing at least 10 years of biological decline, while the most ambitious goal is a 20-year improvement within one year or less of treatment. Goda’s team is now moving forward after receiving recognition for results obtained in aged animal studies.

At the center of the research are exosomes, naturally occurring nanoparticles released by cells. These membrane-bound vesicles normally transport proteins, lipids, messenger RNA, and other molecular signals between cells, functioning as part of the body’s communication network. Because exosomes can carry biological cargo and interact with specific tissues, scientists have been investigating them as potential alternatives to synthetic drug-delivery systems. However, naturally produced exosomes often lack sufficient targeting precision, limiting their ability to reach the cells most relevant to a disease or aging process.

The Tohoku-led group attempted to solve that problem by chemically modifying the surface of exosomes with lanthanide ions. Lanthanides are a family of metallic elements with distinctive electronic and chemical properties. According to the researchers, attaching these ions changes the surface behavior of the exosomes and substantially improves their ability to recognize and bind to senescent cells. The resulting particles have been named “super exosomes,” a term that reflects their enhanced targeting and delivery capabilities rather than a new biological category.

Cellular senescence is one of the major biological processes associated with aging. Senescent cells have generally stopped dividing because of accumulated damage or stress, but they do not necessarily disappear. Instead, some remain metabolically active and release inflammatory molecules, growth regulators, and other signals that can disrupt nearby tissues. This collection of secreted factors, often called the senescence-associated secretory phenotype, can contribute to chronic inflammation, impaired tissue repair, and the deterioration of organs. Precisely influencing these cells has therefore become a major objective in longevity research.

The proposed super-exosome platform is designed to deliver regenerative molecular cargo directly to aging tissues after attaching to senescent cells. Potential cargoes include growth factors, messenger RNA, and other genetic materials capable of altering cellular behavior. Rather than distributing such molecules broadly throughout the body, a targeted exosome could concentrate them near damaged or dysfunctional tissue. In theory, this approach could promote repair while reducing unwanted effects in healthy cells, although the degree of targeting and the durability of the response will need to be confirmed in human studies.

In preclinical experiments involving several groups of aged mice, the researchers reported statistically significant improvements in frailty, physical performance, and multiple functional measures associated with aging. They also described the treatment’s safety profile as excellent in the studies conducted so far. The team says the overall benefit corresponds to more than 15 additional healthy human years when estimated using cross-species lifespan scaling. Such calculations can help compare biological effects between species, but they are not evidence that a mouse treatment will extend human life by a specific number of years. Human biology, dosing, immune responses, and long-term risks could differ substantially.

The award will support the next stage of development: clinical studies planned in collaboration with Tohoku University Hospital and the Tohoku University Healthspan Research Center. These studies will need to establish how the particles behave in humans, how efficiently they reach senescent cells, what cargoes are most effective, and whether the treatment produces measurable improvements in strength, cognition, immunity, or other healthspan indicators. Researchers will also have to monitor possible immune reactions, unintended effects on healthy tissues, changes in tumor risk, and the persistence of engineered exosomes in the body. These questions are essential before claims of age reversal can move beyond the laboratory.

The platform could eventually be investigated for conditions involving muscle decline, cognitive impairment, immune dysfunction, hair loss, skin aging, and reproductive health. The team plans to commercialize the technology through NanoTitan, with the aim of developing scalable manufacturing and international distribution for exosome-based therapeutics produced in Japan. “Advancing to the XPRIZE Healthspan finals is an important milestone, but our ultimate goal is to translate this technology into therapies that allow people to lead healthy, independent, and active lives longer,” Goda said. The research now enters its most demanding phase: determining whether an impressive result in aged mice can become a safe, reproducible, and clinically meaningful treatment for people.

Subject of Research: Engineered “super exosomes” designed to target senescent cells and deliver regenerative molecular cargo for healthy aging.

Article Title: Japanese Research Team Wins US$1 Million XPRIZE Award for “Super Exosome” Aging Technology

Web References: https://mediasvc.eurekalert.org/Api/v1/Multimedia/673c8fb3-268a-4a90-93b4-a0d531624a52/Rendition/low-res/Content/Public

Image Credits: Goda Lab

Keywords: Super exosomes, exosomes, cellular senescence, healthy aging, longevity research, XPRIZE Healthspan, regenerative medicine, Tohoku University, lanthanide ions, aged mice, healthspan, nanomedicine