Columbia Mailman School Receives ARPA-H Award to Accelerate Aging Research

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has received an award as part of the PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (PROSPR) program within the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The project, led by Daniel Belsky, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology, aims to accelerate research on the biological hallmarks of aging. The initiative's goal is to identify interventions that can extend healthy years of life in humans.

While life expectancy has increased, the number of years people spend in good health has not kept pace, with chronic diseases affecting more Americans as they age.

The ARPA-H-funded project seeks to shift medicine from treating age-related disease after it appears to preventing decline before it begins. Dr. Belsky stated the goal is to identify measurable biological signals indicating that interventions are slowing the aging process itself.

The FAST Project

This award supports the five-year ARPA-H-funded PROSPR program. The FAST project will analyze data and biospecimens from already-completed clinical trials to discover novel biomarkers that reveal how specific drugs affect the biology of aging.

FAST integrates clinical and biological data from multiple trials testing drugs that modify fundamental aging processes and reduce the risk of multiple chronic diseases. These include:

• Metformin
• SGLT-2 inhibitors
• GLP-1 agonists
• Rapamycin

These drugs target core biological drivers of aging and have extended lifespan in animal models.

Preliminary Findings and Significance

Early findings indicate that rapamycin may slow ovarian aging by approximately 20 percent, potentially extending fertility by up to five years. Other trials show improvements in cardiovascular biomarkers, patient-reported health status, and reduced progression to diabetes.

Andrew Brack, ARPA-H Program Manager, stated that biomarkers are crucial for making clinical trials for aging interventions shorter.

Dr. Nir Barzilai noted that the project will enable older adults to learn their biological age, receive targeted interventions, and for biotech innovators to assess drug efficacy earlier in trials.

Collaboration and Data Access

The project brings together experts from five institutions. Dr. Belsky serves as principal investigator, with co-leadership from Nir Barzilai, MD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Mahdi Moqri, PhD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital.

All FAST data will be made available to qualified researchers through the Columbia Data Platform.

Dr. Belsky stated that the project moves the science of aging from theory to action by combining data from multiple clinical trials to identify biological signals of what slows aging in humans.