Glossary

A broad marketing phrase for products, habits, or treatments claimed to reduce, delay, or mask signs of aging. It is not a clinical endpoint.

The use of machine learning to identify, design, or screen drug candidates faster than traditional lab-by-lab experimentation, including for aging-related disease.

The use of artificial intelligence to accelerate aging research, including drug discovery, biological age measurement, and disease prediction.

Cell survival pathways that help a cell avoid programmed death.

An estimate of how old the body appears biologically, based on measurable markers, as opposed to chronological age, which simply counts years since birth.

The underlying process of molecular, cellular, and functional change that unfolds over time in the body. Biological age is one way researchers try to estimate where someone sits within that process.

Measurable biological signals, such as blood markers, epigenetic clocks, or functional tests, used to estimate how a person's body is aging compared to their calendar age.

A research technique that resets aged cells to a more youthful state by activating a small set of genes, without erasing the cell's identity.

A cell state where a cell permanently stops dividing, often after damage or stress.

Small signaling proteins cells use to send immune and inflammation messages.

Identifying and addressing disease risk before symptoms appear, rather than treating disease after diagnosis.

The number of years a person lives in good health, function, and independence, as distinct from lifespan, which simply counts total years alive.

A shorthand phrase for attempts to summarize how well someone is aging across multiple measures. There is no single universal healthspan score used across the whole field.

A serious lung-scarring disease with no clear single cause, often shortened to IPF.

Chronic, low-grade inflammation that tends to rise with age.

A medical or wellness practice that sells testing, interpretation, and interventions aimed at slowing biological aging and extending healthspan, usually outside insurance.

An emerging area of preventive medicine focused on slowing biological aging and extending healthspan. It has no recognized specialty board in the United States.

A model of care that tailors prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to an individual's genetics, biomarkers, and health data, rather than a one-size-fits-all standard.

A plant compound studied with dasatinib as part of one of the best-known experimental senolytic combinations.

The mix of inflammatory signals and other molecules released by senescent cells.

Cells that have stopped dividing but do not die off normally. They can build up with age and release signals that promote inflammation.

The process of clearing senescent cells from tissue. Senolytics are the compounds designed to trigger that process.

A class of compounds studied for their ability to selectively clear senescent ("zombie") cells that accumulate with age and contribute to inflammation and tissue decline.

Compounds that suppress the inflammatory signals senescent cells release (the SASP) without killing the cells, unlike senolytics, which clear the cells outright.