Zhavoronkov’s “Longevity Pledge” invites the world’s 1% and longevity enthusiasts to make longer, healthier human lifespans a reality for everyone.
Yesterday, the AI, biotech and longevity pioneer Alex Zhavoronkov publicly called for the world’s most successful founders, altruistic billionaires and dedicated longevity pioneers to join him in his unorthodox and principled Longevity Pledge.
Longevity.Technology: Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, is the founder and Chief Longevity Officer of Deep Longevity, the founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, and an adjunct professor at the esteemed Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He serves on the Visionary Board of the Longevity Science Foundation, is part of the advisory board for longevity and biotech venture capital firm LongeVC and advises multiple other non-profits and startups working in longevity biotechnology. In a nutshell, when it comes to longevity, Zhavoronkov knows his onions.
Yesterday, Alex Zhavoronkov formally announced his personal Longevity Pledge, which means he commits his wealth and resources, as well as all of his remaining time to supporting and developing research and clinical solutions for extending healthy productive longevity for everyone on the planet.
READ MORE: Insilico’s Alex Zhavoronkov announces Longevity Pledge
“Making productive longevity, or the ability to live a longer, healthier life, is the most altruistic cause you can support,” said Zhavoronkov. “If we could extend everyone’s life by just one more high-quality, healthy year, our world would benefit from roughly 8 billion more impactful years in a few generations. These years could mean thousands of new medical and scientific discoveries, impactful action on climate change, and more. This is no time to waste. I hope my example will motivate people with similar backgrounds to not only commit their wealth, but also their intellect, skills, and ingenuity to this strangely underappreciated cause.”
Alex Zhavoronkov’s personal Longevity Pledge includes:
- Committing his entire fortune (including future earnings) to the cause of human longevity
- 100% of his time to advising, founding, creating and pursuing longevity initiatives
- Invest solely in companies with the potential to extend healthy, productive life, forming a global longevity ecosystem. These companies can grow, become sustainable, give rise to other companies, and return profits that can be reinvested in other longevity enterprises.
The full pledge can be read here.
By inviting others to join the Longevity Pledge, Alex Zhavoronkov believes that four significant breakthroughs for human longevity will be accelerated from approaching release in 20+ years to broadly available in 5 years:
- The development of AI-powered drug discovery platforms that will significantly derisk, accelerate, and democratise the discovery of novel therapeutics. The cost of drug discovery and development may exceed $3 billion to launch just one novel drug on the market. According to Insilico, the process from disease hypothesis and target discovery to launch of the drug in the clinic can take at least 12 years and fails 99% of the time.
- Personalised medicine, treatment and drugs: develop fully automated systems that can customise care to each patient and help discover novel therapeutics and therapeutic combinations for individuals.
- Cryotherapy/cryobiology and biostasis: recent advances can allow doctors to freeze and unfreeze organs rapidly, and possibly entire bodies, to enable long-term storage, transport, and even “biostasis” for the terminally ill or irreparably frail.
- AI and robotics-powered hospitals: all of the above breakthroughs support the creation of entirely new research and clinical infrastructure for medical care and repair. Creating an AI/robotics-driven preventive and regenerative research hospital is Alex Zhavoronkov’s ultimate goal.
