Appears he now has/operates a Longevity Clinic, listen carefully through the video.
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Gemini:
Here is a summary, critique, and a tidy transcript of Dr. Matt Kaeberlein’s talk at the Mauritius Longevity Summit 2025.
Summary
Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, a leading biogerontologist and founder of Optispan, presents a foundational overview of geroscience and its clinical applications. He distinguishes between “longevity medicine” (often associated with hype) and “Healthspan Medicine” (evidence-based care).
Key Takeaways:
- Biological vs. Chronological Age: Biological aging is a malleable biological process distinct from the passage of time. It varies between species (dogs vs. humans) and individuals.
- Geroscience Hypothesis: Targeting the biological mechanisms of aging (Hallmarks of Aging) is far more effective than treating individual diseases. Curing cancer or heart disease might add 3–4 years to life expectancy, whereas slowing aging could add significantly more healthy years.
- Three “Fictions” of Aging:
- “We are close to solving aging”: Current interventions (like rapamycin) are effective but nowhere near “immortality.”
- “Aging has been reversed”: While specific phenotypes (like hair color or muscle strength) can be reversed, systemic biological reversal has not been achieved.
- “Clocks measure biological age”: Current aging clocks only measure correlations (e.g., methylation states correlated to chronological age or mortality), not the biological age itself.
- Three “Facts” of Aging:
- Biological aging is modifiable: Diet, exercise, and drugs like rapamycin can slow aging in mammals.
- Targeting aging is superior to disease-specific care: It addresses the root cause of multiple chronic diseases simultaneously.
- We know enough to act now: Interventions can be applied to companion animals (Dog Aging Project) and humans today.
- Clinical Application (Optispan): Kaeberlein advocates for a “pragmatic” approach focusing on lifestyle pillars (Eat, Move, Sleep, Connect) and approved therapeutics, while avoiding unproven supplements and “wellness” hype.
- Future Outlook: He expresses optimism that AI will democratize high-quality healthspan medicine, making it accessible to the masses rather than just the wealthy.
Critique
Strengths:
- Scientific Rigor & Pragmastism: Kaeberlein successfully grounds a field rife with speculation. His refusal to use the term “reversing aging” and his critique of commercial aging clocks provide a necessary counterbalance to the industry’s hype.
- Clear Analogies: The comparison of dog years to human years effectively explains the variability of biological aging rates. The “drinking game” joke regarding aging clocks, while lighthearted, firmly underscores his skepticism about their current clinical utility.
- Actionable Framework: Unlike many theoretical talks, he provides a concrete clinical framework (Optispan’s pillars), making the science applicable to daily medical practice.
Weaknesses & Points of Discussion:
- AI Optimism vs. Clock Skepticism: There is a slight tonal disconnect between his deep skepticism of biological clocks (due to lack of validation) and his high optimism for AI in healthcare (which arguably suffers from similar “black box” and validation issues).
- “Friendly Fire”: His specific call-out of the previous/next speaker (Brian Kennedy) regarding clocks—while framed as banter—highlights a significant lack of consensus in the field. This might confuse a lay audience looking for a unified scientific voice.
- Definitional Semantics: His attempt to rebrand “Longevity Medicine” to “Healthspan Medicine” is well-intentioned but risks being a semantic distinction without a difference to the general public, potentially adding to the jargon rather than clarifying it.
Tidy Transcript
Speaker: Dr. Matt Kaeberlein
Event: Mauritius Longevity Summit 2025
Topic: Optimizing Health Through Longevity Science
Introduction
Host: We have three speakers before the break: Matt Kaeberlein, Brian Kennedy, and Evelyne Bischof. From the Mauritius Longevity Summit perspective, these are three of the most eminent speakers on the planet. They are giving an overview of what aging research is and how it is applicable. Brian is looking at clocks and how they are useful currently, and Evelyne is taking us into the clinic.
Matt and Brian are really among the founders of this whole thing. Both gentlemen worked in the same lab for a period of time—they’ll argue as to who was there first—but they did fundamental work in things like sirtuins and the mTOR pathway. Matt is one of the founding scientists in this field. He was involved in the Dog Aging Project and recently opened the Optispan Clinic and the associated Optispan podcast. Without further ado, can I introduce Dr. Matt Kaeberlein.
Defining Healthspan Medicine
Matt Kaeberlein: Thank you. That was a nice way of saying I’m old and I’ve been around a long time in this field. For those of you who don’t know me, my training is as a basic scientist. I spent 20 to 25 years studying the genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry of longevity. A couple of years ago, I left my academic position to start Optispan, which I frame as a healthcare technology company. Our goal is to create enabling technologies to allow medical professionals to practice what I call “Healthspan Medicine.”
I have become a little dissatisfied with the term “longevity medicine.” Not because that’s not what we’re doing, but because it has become associated with things that are not as rigorous or scientific as I would like. I tell you this because my lens is influenced by my training as a basic scientist. A lot of what I will say today centers on the need for more precision and rigor in how we think and talk about this science.
The Fundamentals of Biological Aging
We’ve talked a lot about biological aging, but I want to ensure everyone is on the same page. Dogs are a powerful way to illustrate this concept. Everyone is familiar with the idea that one human year is about seven dog years. That is just another way of saying dogs age biologically about seven times faster than people do.
First, biological aging does not equal chronological time. It is a biological process under the control of both genetic and environmental factors. We know a fair amount now about those factors.
Second, there is variation in the rate of biological aging across species and individuals. Big dogs age biologically faster than small dogs; they have a shorter life expectancy and develop diseases at an accelerated rate. There is evidence this body size effect is true in humans and mice as well.
Crucially, biological aging is a qualitative concept, not quantitative. We do not have any way to measure biological aging. There is no consensus definition on what it is. I say that because you will hear people say, “We measured biological age.” Every time you hear that, just think: No, you didn’t.
The rate of biological aging is malleable. It is dynamic. Early in life, dogs may age 15 to 20 times as fast as people, and later only two or three times as fast. It does not stay the same.
Hallmarks of Aging and Geroscience
The Hallmarks of Aging are apparently highly evolutionarily conserved factors tightly associated with biological aging—in some cases, likely causal. This is powerful because it gives us targets to go after therapeutically. However, they are incomplete (the list has grown from 9 to 12) and interconnected. If we tweak key nodes like mTOR or Insulin/IGF-1 signaling, we can modulate all the hallmarks simultaneously.
Geroscience is the study of the biology that connects aging to age-related functional declines and disease. In most developed countries, biological aging is the single greatest risk factor for the vast majority of chronic diseases. In the US, nine of the top ten causes of death have biological age as the greatest risk factor.
Common risk factors like smoking, obesity, or high blood pressure increase risk by two- to four-fold. In comparison, aging biologically by four decades increases risk by orders of magnitude. If we target that biology, we can reduce the risk of all these diseases simultaneously.
Three Fictions (Myths) of Aging
Fiction 1: We are close to solving aging.
It is hard to argue we are close. If you look at animal data, we are not continuously getting better at having a large impact on lifespan. The largest effect on lifespan in a mammal (post-developmental) is extreme caloric restriction, published almost 50 years ago. The next best is rapamycin, which has about half that magnitude. We are not going to be immortal five years from now; the data just doesn’t back that up.
Fiction 2: Aging has been reversed.
We can reverse specific phenotypes of aging (e.g., coloring gray hair, building muscle), but we didn’t make the organism biologically younger. Bryan Johnson is not aging in reverse. David Sinclair’s mice did not age in reverse. We create confusion when we use sloppy language.
Fiction 3: Clocks measure biological age.
Clocks are useful research tools, but they do not measure biological age. Epigenetic clocks measure average methylation state at a subset of genomic positions. These patterns are correlated to something—chronological age, mortality risk, or disease risk—but they are a correlation to a correlation. They are not direct measures.
Three Facts of Aging
Fact 1: Biological aging is modifiable.
We know ways to do this in mice (caloric restriction, rapamycin). We can modify biological aging in either direction.
Fact 2: Targeting aging is more effective than targeting diseases.
Current healthcare is reactive. Targeting aging is proactive. If we cure cancer, we add about three years to life expectancy. If we slow aging comparable to what rapamycin does in mice, the effect is much larger, and those years are spent in good health.
Fact 3: We know enough to act.
I believe we know enough to modulate biological aging today in companion animals and people. The Dog Aging Project is testing rapamycin in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. I am confident that slowing aging in companion animals is a solvable problem.
Clinical Approach: Optispan
To be successful, this medicine must be pragmatic. You can’t measure everything or do multi-omics on everyone. We need to find the 80/20—where we get 80% of the value for 20% of the cost.
At Optispan, we focus on the foundation. Lifestyle is the biggest lever. We use four pillars: Eat, Move, Sleep, Connect. These pillars work because they modulate the biology of aging. They are true geroscience therapeutics.
We use proactive diagnostics: comprehensive blood work, DEXA scans (super powerful for bone density, muscle mass, and fat distribution), advanced cancer screening (like Gallery tests), and genetics.
We stopped using broad microbiome tests and biological age tests in the clinic. Why? We have no information on their precision or accuracy, no industry quality control, and they are generally not actionable.
The Gray Area & The Future
There is a lot of “gray area” in longevity science.
- Supplements: We are conservative. Most have little evidence.
- Peptides: Interesting but often used recklessly without safety data.
- Therapeutic Plasma Exchange: FDA approved and interesting, but perhaps not ready for broad rollout.
- Gene Therapy: There is no reason people should be getting gene therapy for longevity right now; we don’t even know which genes to modulate.
I am optimistic about the future. AI tools give us the opportunity to scale high-quality healthspan medicine to billions. Current AI models can already analyze blood work and DEXA scans with high proficiency. I see a path where high-quality care doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars, and AI will help us get there.
Q&A
Question: Is there any way to get into the dog trial now?
Matt Kaeberlein: The Dog Aging Project (dogagingproject.org) is currently US-only. Any dog living in the US can participate by being nominated on the website and completing the survey.
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