Andrea Maier's Precision-Medicine Approach Aims to Give Longevity Science a Solid Evidence Base
核心洞察
Dr. Andrea Maier opened a new clinical trial center at the National University of Singapore in 2025, enabling multiple long-term trials of supplements, exercise, and lifestyle interventions for health span.
Her trials enroll people whose biological age exceeds their chronological age, increasing the likelihood of detecting meaningful effects from targeted interventions.
The PROMETHEUS trial's 8-week pilot protocol produced "promising results" on markers of muscle, cognitive, and immune function in 20 participants.
Dr. Andrea Maier, director of the Academy for Healthy Longevity at the National University of Singapore, is working to solve what she sees as longevity medicine's most pressing problem: a lack of rigorous clinical evidence. In 2025, Maier helped open a new clinical trial center at the university, which will enable teams to run multiple long-term trials assessing the effects of supplements, exercise routines, and other lifestyle interventions for health span.
Maier's groundbreaking body of clinical research investigates whether the various drugs and interventions that make mice live better and longer—including supplements like nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) and alpha-ketoglutarate (搜索) (AKG)—actually translate into benefits for people. This work has brought her to the forefront of longevity medicine worldwide.
A Precision-Medicine Approach to Aging
In contrast to many other longevity studies, which tend to recruit people from the general population, Maier's trials mainly enroll people whose biological age—measured by looking at age-linked alterations in various organs and tissues—is older than their chronological age. By doing this, she increases the chances that if a supplement can help a subset of people, she and her team will be able to detect it in the results.
"If somebody has very good vitamin D levels, which are optimal, why would I include that person in a vitamin D trial?" Maier says.
This is part of her vision for producing individualized, precision-medicine plans for patients, so people can zero in on interventions that match their biology. "Aging is so heterogeneous," she says. Telling everyone to take a given molecule is a little like giving everyone diagnosed with cancer the same chemotherapy, or handing out insulin regardless of diabetes status, she explains.
The PROMETHEUS Trial and Next Steps
Maier's PROMETHEUS trial investigated this tailored approach, involving specialized dietary and exercise advice, supplements, and cognitive behavioral therapy, among other interventions. An 8-week pilot protocol evaluating the effects on markers of muscle, cognitive, and immune function in 20 people produced "promising results."
Next, Maier and her team are planning a randomized controlled trial, which will allow the team to study whether the interventions have a beneficial effect on health over the course of a year.
Building a Scientific Foundation
Maier hopes the brand-new, state-of-the-art center will help generate the evidence needed to give longevity medicine a solid scientific base, and train a new generation of doctors on the science of longevity. She notes the center "is now too small again, because we have too many trials—which is great."
Her work sits within a broader longevity boom that TIME has recognized through its 2026 Longevity Leaders, a group of 12 trailblazers marking the way to a longer, healthier life. As the field matures, Maier's emphasis on rigorous, targeted clinical evidence addresses a central challenge: right now, there is no proven longevity drug that can make a person live longer, and separating legitimate science from unproven claims remains a key priority for the field.