For Beijing-based METiS TechBio CEO Lai Tsai-ta, ageing is comparable to bugs building up in a complex software system – it happens once errors begin to accumulate in the genetic code of human cells, such as their DNA sequences.
“Those errors can be reprogrammed. It becomes possible to use AI to read, rewrite and reverse cells, or at least slow the ageing process,” Lai said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
The process could begin by fixing “immune cells, such as T cells, as their function declines after old age. That is why older people become more susceptible to cancer and all kinds of disease,” he added.
Eyeing the growing longevity market, the six-year-old start-up uses AI algorithms to design nano-delivery platforms capable of delivering drug payloads into specific cells and organs. The company raised US$269.5 million from its initial public offering in Hong Kong on May 13. Cornerstone investors included BlackRock and UBS Asset Management Singapore, which subscribed a combined US$148 million.
Cellular reprogramming has become one of the most ambitious and hotly contested frontiers in longevity science as AI accelerates how biotech firms model human biology and discover life-extending therapies through pharmaceutical research and health and wellness programmes.
Although the field is still in the early stages of development, advances have been made quickly. The United States is currently the global leader in cellular reprogramming for anti-ageing and longevity, driven by massive, multibillion-dollar private investments and research and development.
It also accounts for 57 per cent of all global longevity companies and 84 per cent of total deal volume, according to a report published by Longevity Technology in 2024. Global investment in the sector amounted to US$8.49 billion, it said.
In 2024, California-based Turn Biotechnologies, using its proprietary mRNA partial reprogramming technology, said it had reversed the biological age of human skin fibroblasts in laboratory tests by up to 10.4 years. It has remained at the preclinical stage and trials on humans have yet to be initiated.
The company’s core assets, including its mRNA partial reprogramming technology, were acquired by South Korea’s Daewoong Pharmaceutical in May via an auction bid. The financial details were not publicly disclosed.
However, a growing number of Chinese researchers and domestic biotech companies like METiS TechBio have been using AI to kill the “bugs” and decode diseases, aiming to get a bigger slice of the global longevity market. This was forecast to reach around US$610 billion by 2026, according to Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer.
They include QiSeLian Biotechnology, a Shanghai-based preclinical stage company founded in 2025, that is developing personalised cell therapies targeting anti-ageing applications. Another firm looking to benefit from the growing market is Hangzhou-based Xingsai Ruizhen Biotech founded in 2022, which focuses mainly on rapid reprogramming and gene-editing platforms rooted in induced pluripotent stem cells, commonly known as iPSC.
Furthermore, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Capital Medical University introduced a new type of human stem cell last year called senescence-resistant mesenchymal progenitor cells, or SRCs, by reprogramming the genetic pathways associated with longevity. These cells, which are said to resist ageing and stress without developing tumours, were tested on elderly crab-eating macaques, who share physiological similarities with humans in their 60s and 70s.
“Longevity drives investment in innovative healthcare” in Asia, said Daniel Blake, Morgan Stanley’s Asia equity and thematic strategist, in a podcast in October. The United Nations defines a super-aged society as when more than 21 per cent of the population is aged 65 and above, which China is projected to become by 2030 with 260 million people in that demographic. The US investment bank has identified longevity as one of Asia’s four defining investment themes for 2026.
This boom is being fuelled by government support and a structural shift moving longevity from the consumer wellness space into mainstream institutional healthcare. China’s new biomedical regulations, which took effect on May 1, have now placed stem cell therapy, gene editing and somatic cell treatment under a unified legal framework for the first time.
The Asia-Pacific cell reprogramming market is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 7.55 per cent through 2031, making it the fastest-growing region globally, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence.
“China is at the forefront of this with some promising pipeline therapies at advanced clinical stages, partly due to more friendly regulatory framework and application as medical technology rather than a new drug,” said Bruce Liu, senior partner at global consulting firm Simon-Kucher.
“We believe cellular reprogramming could be the next frontier with its more holistic approach in tackling complex diseases,” Liu said.
AI has helped advance cellular reprogramming to delay ageing, and now some companies are also using it to integrate genomic data, biomarkers and health records to improve disease risk prediction.
One such company is American firm Human Longevity, which on its website states “the biggest threat to human health is what goes undetected”. The company, based in San Diego, was co-founded in 2013 by the late J. Craig Venter, who led the team that first sequenced the human genome.
“While perfect prediction isn’t here yet, combining whole genome sequencing, imaging, multi-omics, and AI allows us to significantly boost how accurately we identify major health risks. That’s the future we’re working on,” said He Wei-wu, executive chairman of Human Longevity.
He added that the company’s self-developed algorithm can predict “heart attack, stroke, dementia, cancer, diabetes, kidney failure”.
He cited breast cancer as one example, whereby if a patient were able to predict it 10 to 15 years in the future, the cancer would most likely be diagnosed at stage one where it is highly treatable and often curable.
A human body has billions of DNA codes, so “there’s already a lot of information about your health and longevity” and your inherited DNA or “genome contributes to 50 per cent of your life expectancy”, he added.
In a multimillion-dollar AI co-development collaboration announced in May, Human Longevity teamed up with Hong Kong-listed Insilico Medicine to build “the industry’s first large-scale” AI foundation models to predict diseases decades before clinical symptoms appear.
Under the arrangement, Insilico – an AI-driven drug discovery firm with a focus on longevity – would contribute model architecture and computational algorithms, while Human Longevity would provide the genomic data sets compiled from thousands of individuals.
The AI foundation models “will eventually work on 50,000 potential human diseases”, He said. “We will implement them one by one based on their importance.”
Human Longevity operates clinics in its home state of California and in Beijing. He said the company is planning to expand its footprint in the Chinese market to include Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
Fees at the clinic start at US $599, which He said provides a lifelong baseline for assessing major disease risks, including coronary artery disease, hereditary cancer syndromes and other inherited health risks. However, with an integrated care team that interprets genomic, imaging, proteomic and laboratory data to develop a personalised longevity and disease‑prevention plan, testing can also cost as much as US $25,000 per year. He said the goal is to predict health risks up to a decade in advance.
The company has raised a total of US$409 million over six funding rounds between 2014 and 2024, with the most recent financing led by Singapore-based TVM Capital Healthcare, according to Tracxn, a market intelligence platform.
According to scientists, ageing is a defence mechanism against the cell proliferation that causes cancer.
However, world-renowned oncology leader Dr Antoine Yver pointed out pointed out longevity has limits and that currently, human lifespans are unlikely to exceed 120 years.
“About 85 to 90 per cent of what can be done [in suppressing disease] has been done,” said Yver in an interview on the sidelines of the Macquarie Asia Conference on May 19. “So I think we are towards the end of the curve – the return on effort is minimal for most of what can be controlled.”
The idea that all the health problems which gradually accumulate and build up over the span of a lifetime can be entirely erased has zero plausibility, he added.
Furthermore, neither AI nor medicine is able to address loneliness, which Yver sees as a fundamental disease of modern life.
“Loneliness is the most critical driver of survival in people who are aged [65 and above], beyond anything else,” Yver said. “If you have cancer at that age, regardless of the stage or the treatment you receive, what matters more is your social rights. It drives survival more than the quality or effectiveness [of cancer therapy] – or even the stage of the disease.”
“Human life is not about performance. It’s about robustness,” he added.
Along similar lines, Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate in chemistry and a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said there are a few easy rules to abide by if you want to live longer.
“Don’t drink too much, drink lots of water, don’t eat too much, exercise and sleep,” he said at the Asia Summit on Global Health in Hong Kong on May 11.