STAT+: The woman behind the world’s biggest longevity competition

BERKELEY, Calif. — Jamie Justice is an anti-aging researcher with a name fit for a superhero and a grand mission to match.

A few years ago, she left her tenure-track job at Wake Forest University to team up with entrepreneur Peter Diamandis on XPRIZE Healthspan — a $101 million global competition meant to identify therapeutic treatments that can restore muscle, cognition, and immune function in older adults. “There’s a booming market for slowing aging, but there’s no way to tell if [treatments] work,” Justice said onstage at the longevity conference Vitalist Bay here this month.

XPRIZE Healthspan, for which she serves as executive director, was created to bridge that gap. The 10 teams selected from a pool of 40 this year will be required to test out their therapies in yearlong randomized controlled clinical trials before the winner of the grand prize is announced in 2030.  Dressed in wide-legged jeans and a dark blazer, Justice walked the audience through XPRIZE competitors’ varying approaches to longevity.