Insilico's co-CEO hopes 'we might have a chance to stop biological aging' after promising results from its fibrosis drug trial

Healthcare executives at the Fortune Leaders Forum in Macau made a big claim with a very practical catch. Children born today could see average life expectancy pass 100 within a generation, they said. But longer lives only help if people can actually afford the care that keeps them going.

Kelvin Loh, who is group chief healthcare officer at insurer AIA, put the problem bluntly: the hard part is not inventing more medicine. It is making that medicine accessible to millions as populations age. By 2050, one in four people in Asia-Pacific will be over 60, up from about one in seven now, and that means more chronic illness and more pressure on healthcare systems.

Into that gap steps Insilico Medicine, which wants to use AI drug discovery to go after aging at its source. On Sept. 7, the company said patients taking its experimental fibrosis drug showed a decline in predicted biological age of roughly three years on average, and as much as six years on one measure. The market liked the pitch: shares are up 11% since the news.

Feng Ren, Insilico’s co-CEO and head of drug research and development, framed it in the boldest possible way: “We might have a chance to stop biological aging.” Loh was less dramatic, but not exactly pessimistic. He said life will be extended, even if aging itself is not cured, and pointed to cancer’s shift from death sentence to chronic disease as proof medicine can stretch the timeline.

That idea of “healthspan” came up again and again. Keith Choy, president of Asia-Pacific at Haleon, said the goal is not just to live longer but to live healthier, especially since people may spend roughly the last decade of life in poor health or with some kind of disability. He also floated a future where wearable tech and AI could make something like a personal doctor available to nearly everyone in China’s 1.4 billion people.