Today, he said, he sees support for longevity science from his colleagues within HHS. “If I could describe one common theme to the senior leadership at HHS, obviously it’s to make America healthy again, and reversing aging damage is all about making people healthy again,” he said. “We are refocusing HHS on addressing and reversing chronic disease, and chronic diseases are what drive aging, broadly.”
Over the last year, thousands of NIH grants worth over $2 billion were frozen or terminated, including funds for research on cancer biology, health disparities, neuroscience, and much more. When asked whether any of that funding will be restored, he did not directly address the question, instead noting: “You’ll see a lot of funding more focused on important priorities that actually improve people’s health.”
Watch ARPA-H for news on organ replacements and more
He promised we’ll hear more from ARPA-H, the three-year-old federal agency dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in medical science and biotechnology. It was established with the official goal of promoting “high-risk, high-reward innovation for the development and translation of transformative health technologies.”
O’Neill said that “ARPA-H exists to make the impossible possible in health and medicine.” The agency has a new director—Alicia Jackson, who formerly founded and led a company focused on women’s health and longevity, took on the role in October last year.
O’Neill said he helped recruit Jackson, and that she was hired in part because of her interest in longevity, which will now become a major focus of the agency. He said he meets with her regularly, as well as with Andrew Brack and Jean Hébert, two other longevity supporters who lead departments at ARPA-H. Brack’s program focuses on finding biological markers of aging. Hebert’s aim is to find a way to replace aging brain tissue, bit by bit.
O’Neill is especially excited by that one, he said. “I would try it … Not today, but … if progress goes in a broadly good direction, I would be open to it. We’re hoping to see significant results in the next few years.”
He’s also enthused by the idea of creating all-new organs for transplantation. “Someday we want to be able to grow new organs, ideally from the patients’ own cells,” O’Neill said. An ARPA-H program will receive $170 million over five years to that end, he adds. “I’m very excited about the potential of ARPA-H and Alicia and Jean and Andrew to really push things forward.”
Longevity lobbyists have a friendly ear
O’Neill said he also regularly talks to the team at the lobbying group Alliance for Longevity Initiatives. The organization, led by Dylan Livingston, played an instrumental role in changing state law in Montana to make experimental therapies more accessible. O’Neill said he hasn’t formally worked with them but thinks that “they’re doing really good work on raising awareness, including on Capitol Hill.”
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