UT Health starts $38M aging-drug trial
UT Health San Antonio launched a $38M trial testing three existing drugs to slow aging and extend healthspan — a big institutional bet on repurposing for longevity interventions. The study underscores growing clinical-scale investment into translational longevity research beyond n=1 experiments. (x.com)
VITAL‑H is the trial name and will randomize 726 generally healthy adults in their 60s into four arms—rapamycin, dapagliflozin, semaglutide, or placebo. (news.uthscsa.edu) The project is funded under a five‑year, up‑to‑$38 million contract from ARPA‑H and is integrated into ARPA‑H’s PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (PROSPR) program. (news.uthscsa.edu) ARPA‑H describes VITAL‑H as part of a phase‑3, hybrid effort to establish a regulatory pathway for testing therapeutics that target aging biology rather than single diseases. (arpa-h.gov) PROSPR award materials state teams will use previously collected longitudinal data and new biomarkers as surrogate endpoints, and will pioneer in‑home and decentralized trial designs that measure aging outcomes over one to three years. (arpa-h.gov) One PROSPR performer, Stanford, is tasked with harmonizing vast health datasets and testing an in‑home digital health assessment technology in a 1‑year intervention—work that parallels VITAL‑H’s emphasis on remote, digital measures. (arpa-h.gov) Elena Volpi, MD, PhD, director of the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute, is listed as VITAL‑H principal investigator; the Barshop Institute has been a national site in the NIA Interventions Testing Program for roughly two decades. (news.uthscsa.edu) Participant enrollment is slated to begin next year under the five‑year contract announced Feb. 24, 2026, positioning the study to generate multi‑year digital and biomarker datasets that regulators and researchers can use to evaluate repurposed drugs for healthspan. (arpa-h.gov)
