I spent 3 days with pharma executives. They're suddenly taking longevity seriously.

Pharma executives, scientists, and founders agree: this is THE aging conference to attend. Hilary Brueck/BI Longevity drugmakers gathered in Boston last weekend for their annual shindig. For the first time, the FDA showed up too. Longevity isn't a bad word in the pharma world anymore; it's an investment imperative. For decades, " longevity" was a word serious drug makers avoided. It conjured images of supplement gurus, Silicon Valley biohackers , and anti-aging hucksters — not legitimate medicines backed by clinical trials. That shifted last weekend. The 2026 Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) meeting — the most important longevity conference of the year — landed in the US. After more than a decade in Europe, it was held in Boston, the center of the US biotech industry.