In October 2024, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health introduced a licensing framework for Healthy Longevity Medicine Centers, defining a clinical category and setting standards for facilities. It licensed the Institute for Healthier Living Abu Dhabi as the world’s first state-designated specialized Healthy Longevity Medicine Center. The state is helping decide what counts as a longevity clinic—and which facility can carry that designation.
What the Evidence Can—and Can’t—Say
The central promise hasn’t been tested in humans. Scientists are investigating whether medicine can measure and influence biological changes of aging before they contribute to disease, aiming to extend people’s healthy years, or health span. Daniel Belsky, associate professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, said: “We don’t know yet whether we can really do this. But we do have an alignment of evidence to argue this is possible. And we now have a mobilization of resources to actually test it.”
Nir Barzilai, director of the institute for aging research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, said, “Aging has biology. This biology drives diseases.” His argument is that medicine could eventually target biological processes linked to several aging-related conditions, instead of waiting for diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer to emerge and treating each separately.
Laboratory research has manipulated aging biology in organisms from roundworms to mice. Medicines, exercise, calorie restriction and other interventions can slow the buildup of cellular changes associated with aging and extend animals’ lives, Belsky said. But he cautioned: “For humans, we do not yet have clinical trial evidence that intervention on this biology to extend health span is possible.” Researchers are advancing toward human clinical trials, he said. Proof that these interventions extend healthy life in people hasn’t arrived.
Measuring the Body, Managing the Promise
Researchers are studying biological measures of aging instead of relying only on chronological age. One approach examines epigenetics: changes in how genes are regulated without changing the underlying DNA sequence. Chemical tags called methyl groups bonded to DNA “could track the passage of time in a human body,” Belsky said.
His Finding Aging Biomarkers by Searching Existing Trials (FAST) project collects multi-omic data, including proteins, metabolites and epigenetic marks on white blood cells. Researchers hope to identify indicators that respond to interventions and help measure their effects on aging biology. But scientists haven’t established a connection between changing those biomarkers and extending healthy lifespan.
That gap matters: outcomes may take decades to emerge. A trial testing whether an intervention begun at age 40 or 50 could prevent chronic disease might need to follow participants for two or three decades. Researchers are examining whether aging biomarkers could serve as “surrogate endpoint[s]” in clinical trials, but only if they reliably show that an intervention is likely to prevent disease or extend healthy lifespan. A measurable signal isn’t yet the same as a longer, healthier life.
Clinics, Standards and What People Can Do
Longevity clinics are appearing with conventional medical assessments alongside a wider range of tests intended to build a detailed picture of a person’s health. Mayo Clinic launched its Healthy Longevity Clinic in 2023. Singapore’s National University Health System established a similar program combining detailed assessment with personalized lifestyle or medical interventions. Some scientists have warned that the field needs better regulation as these clinics become more common.
Allan Boston, the institute’s chief operating officer, said: “All your cells are aging constantly. In the past, we thought that was just an inevitable stage of life. It’s not inevitable. There are things we can now start to do about that. That changes the whole concept of medicine.” He added that a deeper understanding of cellular activity could help design therapies, drugs, other immunotherapies and technologies to alter, slow or potentially reverse that pathway.
Belsky pointed to options that don’t require specialist clinics or advanced medical innovations: sleep, exercise, community and diet. “The thing we know works is available in some form to most of us,” he said. “These are things where almost all of us can make progress.” He added: “We can add healthy years to our lifespan even without these new drugs.” Abu Dhabi’s licensing framework and the clinics are taking shape while human evidence remains unsettled; meanwhile, Belsky says some tools for supporting healthy years are already available outside specialized medicine.