Company reveals proprietary biological aging clock, at-home diagnostic tests and personalized interventions to address aging.
Tally Health, the much-anticipated consumer longevity company co-founded by Dr David Sinclair, launched today. Leveraging proprietary, science-backed technology aimed at improving healthspan and extending longevity at the cellular level, Tally’s stated goal is to “change the way we age.”
“DNA is no longer the sole predictor of our destiny or longevity,” said Sinclair, who recently led research suggesting that cellular aging may be driven by changes to the epigenome. “Our genetics determines less than 10% of our longevity; more than 90% is a result of our daily lifestyle choices and environment, and much of the research and interventions in the near future will be focused on extending the human health span. The interest in aging has sparked massive research insights in the field globally and propelled the science of aging to a new level.”
Longevity.Technology: Tally has been very much under wraps since it announced a beta testing program in April last year. Since then, the company has accrued a waitlist of some 270,000 people and has now emerged with a comprehensive suite of longevity products and services aimed squarely at consumers: biological age testing via its proprietary TallyAge clock, personalized insights and lifestyle recommendations designed to help lower your TallyAge, and a daily longevity supplement designed to “boost cellular defense mechanisms and lessen the effects of aging.”
We caught up with Tally CEO Melanie Goldey to learn more.
“Tally Health was created to change the way we think about aging,” Goldey tells us. “Aging has always been seen as something to be endured – something that’s inevitable and, in many ways, negative, with the onset of various conditions, ailments and diseases. The co-founders and I set out to create a consumer company that takes the innovative science going on at David’s lab and across the field of longevity to people who can benefit from it today.”
Calculating your ‘TallyAge’
Tally’s approach to bringing innovative longevity tools and science directly to consumers starts with a simple at-home cheek swab test. The company tests the tissue sample using its proprietary biological aging clock and a next-generation DNA analysis procedure to analyze genetic modifications that change throughout aging and reflect lifestyle habits.
Tally has created its epigenetic aging clock based on DNA methylation analysis, analyzing around 850,000 DNA methylation sites for biomarkers of healthy aging. Using a proprietary machine learning model, this data is used to determine a person’s TallyAge, which may be younger or older than their chronological age.
“Over 8,000 people signed up for our beta, and we used those DNA samples to create our algorithms,” says Goldey. “That’s the largest consumer data set for adult buccal tissue [cheek tissue] that exists. We also over engineered to make sure we had strong diversity within that sample set – we have an age range of 18 to 100, about a 50/50 male/female split, and a non-white population of over 30%. The data you put in is the data that you get out, and the quality of that data really matters, so we’ve really tried to cut out any biases in the algorithm itself.”
Longevity insights, recommendations and supplements
Tally Health memberships range between $199 and $129 per month, depending on the length of the subscription. Membership includes quarterly biological age testing, as well as personalized insights and actionable lifestyle recommendations designed to help people lower their TallyAge.
“We’ve created a digital platform that provides you with a number of personalized recommendations for what you can do to lower your biological age,” says Goldey. “Those recommendations are based on your DNA, but they’re also based on your lifestyle habits that we ask you about. And then we put them into five different categories: diet, fitness, sleep, mental health and habits.”
The recommendations are also prioritized by Tally in terms of their expected impact on your health.
“We not only tell you very specific things, like you need to eat an extra serving of vegetables each day, we are actually stack ranking them in terms of impact,” says Goldey. “Your action plan may predict that getting an extra hour of sleep at night will be more impactful for your body than eating another serving of vegetables.”
Members also receive a daily longevity supplement called Vitality, which has a list of ingredients that reads like a who’s who of popular longevity supplements:
- Calcium alpha-ketoglutarate
- Fisetin
- Quercetin
- Resveratrol
- Spermidine
“There are a lot of different longevity supplements out there, but David has never recommended a brand that he takes,” says Goldey. “He has worked with us to formulate a number of different supplements, but we’re launching with Vitality, which contains five ingredients that have been shown in research to address the hallmarks of aging. It’s a unique combination that’s not currently available on the market.”
A winning team?
So, does Tally have what it takes to build a successful consumer longevity business?
Sinclair’s scientific credentials speak for themselves, Goldey is a strategic health-tech operator who previously led a $100 million IPO, and the company’s third co-founder is Whitney Casey, a partner at L Catterton, the world’s largest consumer-focused private equity firm, which has incubated and backed Tally financially. And a waitlist of 270,000 longevity enthusiasts? You do the math.
“There’s so much innovation happening that is just not accessible to everyday people right now,” says Goldey. “People may hear about the science, but they don’t know how to apply it to their lives, and there’s also a stigma that only the elite can access these aging solutions.”
“David has dedicated more than 30 years of his life and career to furthering the science and innovation in this area. And his vision for Tally was to build something to bring all of that to people who can access and benefit from the science.”
