Highlights

  • An agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) has launched a new research funding initiative, PROSPR.
  • PROSPR’s overarching goal is to extend healthspan—the number of years aging adults enjoy well-being by compressing frailty and disability into a shorter duration toward the end of life.
  • To achieve this goal, researchers will look for new ways to detect and treat consequences of aging like declining memory, hearing, and muscle strength.

To create therapies for healthspan extension and age-related disease prevention, the governmental organization ARPA-H has launched a new program called PROSPR. For this purpose, PROSPR will make funding available to researchers aiming to tackle the challenge of healthspan extension for Americans, according to an ARPA-H press release.

“The ultimate goal is to extend healthspan—meaning the number of years aging adults live healthy lives and enjoy overall well-being by compressing the frailty and disability that comes with aging into a shorter duration of time near the end of life,” says Andrew Brack, PhD, the PROSPR Program Manager.

As for more background on the origins of PROSPR, the program will build on some of the work that the National Institute of Aging has already accomplished. Furthermore, PROSPR will team up with organizations in the biotech industry and unspecified regulators to accelerate the development, testing, and availability of new therapeutics that will target healthpsan.

Prolonging Healthspan May Stimulate the National Economy

This new venture from ARPA-H—PROSPR—may not only impact the health of Americans but also enhance the nation’s economy. In that regard, the percentage of people over age 65 comprises 18% of the US population but is projected to increase to 23% by 2054. Considering that aged adults over 65 require more care, costs associated with healthcare may increase by 75% if nothing is done to combat an age-related loss of physical function, according to the ARPA-H press release.

Moreover, researchers estimate that extending the average American healthspan would lessen the need for care of aged individuals. Extending healthspan would also reduce healthcare costs and decrease reliance on others affiliated with caretaking needs, which would also allow family caregivers to remain in the workforce. Due to these and other contributing factors, it is estimated that increasing healthspan by one year in only 10% of the aging population would diminish the costs of US entitlement programs by $29 billion per year and increase the national economy’s value by an estimated $80 billion per year, according to some health policy research.

PROSPR May Incentivize Scientists to Approach Healthy Aging in New Ways

To address healthspan extension, Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, PhD, Director of ARPA-H, says that researchers will seek new ways to detect and treat an array of dysfunction from aging like declining memory, hearing, and muscle strength. In this way, according to Dr. Wegrzyn, the PROSPR initiative represents a significant shift in the way scientists study healthy aging.

More specifically, researchers who participate in the program will pinpoint physiological and biochemical markers of early manifestations of age-related health changes. Using these markers, they will then develop technologies to assess and target underlying contributing physiological processes that undergo progressive dysfunction during aging. Their hopes are that doing this will help to prevent or thwart age-related diseases with therapeutics geared toward extending healthspan for all Americans.

Proposals for PROSPR Awards from Biomarker Researchers and Drug Developers

For this ARPA-H endeavor, PROSPR will seek proposals from clinical trialists, those who integrate and make sense of large datasets, developers of wearable technologies and apps, biomarker researchers, and drug developers. PROSPR also seeks engagement from the private sector and nonprofits, possibly for funding purposes as well as new idea generation.

Winning proposals are anticipated to receive undisclosed award sums from PROSPR for research, development, and availability of new healthspan-targeting technologies. These awards will be determined based on the quality of the proposals and funding availability. Accordingly, those who would like to submit a proposal to PROSPR can send a team profile via the following website: PROSPR | ARPA-H.