Co-chaired by physicians Anant Vinjamoori and Deepti Agarwal, alongside Japan-based healthcare executive Naoko Kita, NGL 2026 has been deliberately designed as a relatively small, curated gathering rather than a conventional sequence of lectures and exhibition booths. Debates, fireside conversations, workshops and case-based Boardrooms will put different disciplines around the same problems \u2013 with implementation, rather than information alone, as the intended endpoint. The organizers\u2019 own ambition for the gathering is not a modest one: they describe it as something like the World Economic Forum for longevity and the future of medicine \u2013 a global, cross-disciplinary room where debates and working Boardroom sessions take on some of the field\u2019s most pressing open questions, in the hope that what surfaces there changes how the field actually operates, rather than simply how it talks about itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Longevity.Technology: Longevity science is hardly suffering from a shortage of information; the harder problem is what happens when that information leaves the paper or podium and encounters patients, clinical practice and economics. Translation increasingly demands different priorities in the same room \u2013 scientists asking what the evidence supports, clinicians what can responsibly be done and founders, investors and policymakers what can actually be built and scaled. Consensus may be comfortable, but structured disagreement is often more useful; NGL\u2019s Boardroom format is interesting precisely because it is designed to pressure-test assumptions rather than manufacture agreement. Longevity medicine now sits at the collision point between frontier science and ordinary life, where biomarkers must inform decisions, AI must improve rather than decorate practice and regenerative medicine must make the difficult journey from possibility to application. Conferences are rather good at producing conversations \u2013 and business cards; the more meaningful measure is what survives the flight home. NGL\u2019s emphasis on prototypes, partnerships and plans speaks to what the sector increasingly needs: not simply more knowledge about extending healthspan, but better ways of putting the useful parts to work.<\/p>\n
Designed for debate <\/p>\n
The idea took shape on a trip to Japan. Co-chair Dr Anant Vinjamoori visited a year ago to give a talk and came away struck less by the country\u2019s stem-cell science and regenerative medicine frameworks than by something harder to put on a slide: a culture in which longevity is simply how people live, day to day, rather than a frontier being pioneered. That distinction, worked through with the other co-chairs Dr Deepti Agarwal and Naoko Kita, became the seed of NGL \u2013 the conviction that the setting itself should be part of the argument, not just its backdrop.<\/p>\n
The format also developed in response to the organizers\u2019 experience of attending longevity conferences themselves. They saw value in bringing a young and unusually multidisciplinary field together, but felt that successive keynotes and conventional panels could leave participants with plenty to think about and rather less to do. Their response is a meeting intended to make the room itself part of the program \u2013 small enough for participants to contribute rather than simply observe, with connections curated around what individuals are trying to achieve.\u00a0<\/p>\n Central to that approach is the NGL Boardroom, a business-school-style case format in which physicians, scientists, entrepreneurs, policymakers and investors work through unresolved decisions in longevity medicine. Clinical evidence may pull in one direction while technological feasibility, economics or regulation pulls in another; consensus is explicitly not required.<\/p>\n A core faculty will return across multiple sessions rather than appearing for a single presentation, allowing arguments to develop over the two days.\u00a0<\/p>\n Confirmed participants include:\u00a0<\/p>\n Buck Institute CEO Eric Verdin Brian Kennedy (Director, NUS Centre for Healthy Longevity) NUS Academy for Healthy Longevity cofounder and director Andrea Maier Makoto Kuro-o of Jichi Medical University,\u00a0 Precision medicine physician Florence Comite Kenji Shibuya, CEO of Medical Excellence JAPAN Pat Caroll (Global Chief Medical Officer of Hims) Yoshiki Sawa (Chairman of Nakanoshima Qross, Cardiovascular surgeon and President of Japanese Society of Regenerative Medicine) Anthony Molina (co-lead, Central Laboratory and Biorepository for XPRIZE Healthspan) Raghav Sehgal (Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and Faculty Member at Yale University) Why Osaka matters <\/p>\n Japan is more than a convenient pin on the conference map. Its population longevity and aging demographics make it an important real-world case study for healthspan medicine, while its regenerative medicine ecosystem offers a different perspective on how emerging therapies can progress toward clinical use. The organizers see the country as a potential bridge between international longevity medicine and a developing Asia-Pacific ecosystem.\u00a0<\/p>\n The venue makes that argument rather literally. Nakanoshima Qross<\/a> brings clinical care, R&D and an international forum together on one site; the conference will therefore discuss translational medicine within an infrastructure designed around translation rather than in the more familiar habitat of a hotel ballroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is a cultural dimension too. The program sets regenerative therapeutics, precision diagnostics and AI alongside Japanese approaches to food, purpose and social connection. Accompanying experiences include matcha and fermentation traditions, with an optional post-conference study tour to Nagano complete with traditional Buddhist cuisine, shrine visit, a meeting with the town\u2019s famous \u2018Green Centenarians\u2019 and a chance to enjoy the spectacular autumn foliage. The intention is not to confuse tradition with clinical evidence, but to consider healthspan as something lived as well as prescribed \u2013 a useful distinction when preventive medicine ultimately depends on what happens beyond the clinic.\u00a0<\/p>\n From biomarker to bedside <\/p>\n The agenda begins with the biology and measurement of aging before moving deliberately toward application. Biomarker sessions will examine what current tools actually measure and where their clinical utility begins to fray; system-focused discussions will consider aging across the brain, heart, gut and endocrine system rather than treating biological age as one conveniently obedient number.<\/p>\n AI receives similar scrutiny. Alongside discussion of tools already scaling in clinical settings, a boardroom session will explore clinical workflow support, patient education and longitudinal personalized care. Regenerative medicine sessions will consider cellular therapies and Japan\u2019s regulatory landscape, while another strand tackles insurance, policy and employer models \u2013 the less glamorous machinery through which preventive medicine either becomes part of healthcare or remains an attractive parallel universe.<\/p>\n That question of application extends to biological age testing itself. A dedicated discussion will look at how such testing is actually being used once it leaves the research setting \u2013 what incentives it creates for clinicians and patients, and what implementation might look like in practice, including how insurers and employers could build around it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two of the summit\u2019s Boardroom sessions bring that tension into sharper relief, and both look likely to produce more than conversation \u2013 early indications are that at least one will feed into a published white paper, carrying the argument beyond the room. One puts clinicians and scientists from markedly different backgrounds in the same room to compare how they assess patients, prioritize interventions and decide what does or does not belong in a longevity practice \u2013 a reminder that the field is scaling before it has fully agreed on what it is. Another sets a telehealth platform, a consumer health brand and a diagnostics company against each other, each already owning one piece of the patient relationship \u2013 testing, prescribing, ongoing care \u2013 and each wanting the rest; the session asks whether the more defensible strategy is to compete for that ownership outright or interoperate and split the value, with investors effectively forcing the answer by rewarding whichever model actually returns capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a> <\/p>\n