GHS2025 panel members explore how studying long-lived species could reveal pathways to extended healthspan and age-related disease prevention.
Comparative biology offers a unique window into the mechanisms of aging, drawing from the extraordinary diversity of lifespans and healthspans observed in nature. At GHS2025 yesterday, a panel of experts led by Dr Vadim Gladyshev examined how insights from species that defy conventional aging patterns could inform strategies for human health and longevity. The session, featuring Dr Vera Gorbunova, Dr Steve Horvath, Professor João Pedro de Magalhães and Dr Ashley Zehnder, discussed how evolutionary adaptations in long-lived species might unlock new approaches to delaying aging and mitigating age-related diseases.
From the exceptional cancer resistance of the naked mole rat to the regenerative abilities of hibernating mammals, the discussion highlighted the value of looking beyond traditional model organisms. The panelists reflected on how studying species with naturally extended lifespans could reveal protective mechanisms – ranging from efficient DNA repair to metabolic adaptations – that could be harnessed for human health interventions.
Longevity.Technology: Comparative biology provides a compelling framework for understanding healthspan by uncovering conserved biological mechanisms that contribute to longevity. By examining species that have evolved exceptional lifespans, researchers can challenge existing models of aging, identify genetic and metabolic traits that enhance resilience, and translate these findings into new therapeutic strategies. The field has already yielded promising insights, from novel cancer resistance genes in bowhead whales to hibernation-induced repair mechanisms in ground squirrels – both of which could inspire interventions for human aging. However, as the panelists noted, significant challenges remain in translating these discoveries into clinical applications, requiring deeper investment and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Dr Vadim Gladyshev
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
“There is a huge variety in lifespan across species and even across mammals – it varies over a hundredfold. Some mammals like shrews live only two years, and some mammals, like whales, more than 200 years. So nature has done an experiment for us, changing lifespan back and forth, decreasing and increasing many times. So we learn from these natural experiments. We, as a community of scientists in this field, are trying to unlock mechanisms that would allow radical changes in lifespan.”
Dr Vera Gorbunova
Professor & Director, Aging Research Center, University of Rochester
“We study animals such as whales that live twice as long as human beings, and then we also compare many species to identify common pathways among long-lived ones. And what’s really amazing about long lived species – wild animals need to stay extremely healthy to live long otherwise they would not survive. So those adaptations that we discovered can be directly targeted to improve healthspan.”
“What we are identifying in long-lived species are interventions – or I would call adaptations – that were already tested by millions of years of evolution to be actually quite compatible with both long life and healthy life, and this is what we are finding in these long-lived species … We found the bowhead whale has very efficient DNA repair, which is again a strategy that would positively impact not only lifespan but would slow down cancer progression and prevent other diseases of aging. This is the main advantage of comparative biology – that we come up with strategies that were already tested by millions of years of evolution and that affect both lifespan and healthspan.”
Dr Steve Horvath
Principal Investigator, Altos Labs
“The conceptual challenge which is the fundamental question – can we learn something from very long lived species such as the bowhead whale or even bats? These animals are, of course, very impressive from a lifespan perspective, but they have very different ecological niches. Bowhead whales swim in ice cold water, bats fly, and the question is: ‘Can we learn something from these animals?’
“Researchers in the field make a very strong case with highly impactful publications, but that’s challenge #1 – because the opposite view would be why don’t we focus all our attention on the one species we really care about, which is humans, and really study humans in great detail? Challenge #2 is should we go beyond mammalian species? Arguably, we can learn a lot from mammals – we share a lot with them – but what about way more exotic species like reptiles, tortoises, birds and fish. Certain fish species live 500 years! The third challenge is deciding on what kind of omics readout to look at – DNA sequence, epigenetics, transcriptomics, proteomics… Where do you want to look? I feel a lot of work needs to go into developing technologies that really apply to different species.”
Professor João Pedro de Magalhães
Chair of Molecular Biogerontology, University of Birmingham
“From a basic biochemical perspective, mice and humans have similar biology, similar physiology, yet mice age 20 times faster than human beings, and bowhead whales, they age slower than human beings, and they’re resistant to diseases – why is that? I’ve always been fascinated by this difference in lifespan. And we don’t understand why, but clearly these differences in species aging must be seated in the genome; for some reason – we don’t know why or how – but evolution selected for genomes that determine vast differences in lifespan, in healthspan and in aging.
“The genome is the common language across species, so we’ve been involving different sequencing efforts – naked mole-rats, whales, monkeys – and then comparing across species to try to understand or to try to identify genes that could be responsible for the longevity and disease resistance of some of these long-lived species. We also do studies in primates; part of what makes us human is our longevity and our healthspan, but we live much longer than other primates. In order to understand why we are the way we are, and why we develop these diseases at the age we do, it is very important is to understand the evolution of longevity and employ evolutionary genomics to try to understand why we live as long as we do, and, ultimately, can we learn secrets from these long-lived species to live longer, healthier lives?”
Dr Ashley Zehnder
CoFounder & CEO, Fauna Bio
“I think there’s a recognition, now, that aging pathways are going to impact so many large disease areas that are impacting millions of people around the world. We do ourselves a detriment, honestly, as a species if we ignore our connections to other species. We don’t take advantage of learning from how hundreds of millions of years of evolution have gone into perfecting some of these solutions, and a lot of them are essentially laying there undiscovered because of a lack of awareness of the use of these species, because of lack of data and datasets around these species. But there’s a lot of biology that’s being put to the side because people are not aware that the data is there and they are not aware of the ways to translate it. But that has really changed very dramatically even in the past two or three years. There’s really a huge universe to be explored in how other species are using essentially the same genes that you and I have, but in very different ways.”
To watch Day 2 of the Global Healthspan Summit live, please go to: www.hevolution.com
