Biological Age Assessment

miAge is the world's first urinary microRNA-based aging clock, developed by Craif using its Bio-AI technology.

Rather than your "chronological age"—the time elapsed since your birth—miAge estimates your "biological age," which reflects how much your body has actually aged at the cellular level, using only a urine sample.

Aging is a common risk factor across many diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and dementia. Accurately understanding biological age—an indicator of how much a person's cells have aged at the molecular level—contributes to preventive healthcare.

Until now, measuring biological age has primarily relied on DNA methylation tests, which require a blood draw. Because blood collection requires a visit to a medical institution, this approach has seen limited adoption for easy, repeated assessment of biological age.

Craif applied its NANO IP®-powered urinary microRNA analysis technology to aging research and developed miAge, the world's first aging clock capable of accurately estimating biological age from a urine sample alone. These research findings were published in npj Aging (December 2025), an international academic journal in the fields of aging and healthy longevity.*

The first-generation miAge was built by applying machine learning to urinary microRNA data from more than 6,000 Japanese adults, one of the world's largest dataset used in research of its kind. Its high reproducibility has been consistently confirmed using independent validation data that was not used in training.

In independent validation, miAge achieved an average prediction error of about 3.2 years (age-estimation performance*1 of approximately 0.90). This accuracy approaches that of blood-based DNA methylation clocks (age-estimation performance of approximately 0.92)*2 and surpasses existing blood-based microRNA clocks (age-estimation performance of approximately 0.25-0.54)*3. This is the first large-scale demonstration that urinary microRNA can reflect biological age as well as, or better than, blood-based measures.

The second-generation miAge is trained on an even larger dataset and achieves higher accuracy, along with substantially improved disease risk prediction performance.

Because miAge enables repeated, non-invasive measurement of biological age, it holds broad potential—from personal preventive healthcare to research and industrial applications.

In particular, we are exploring its use as an objective measure for evaluating the effects of anti-aging interventions—including diet, exercise, supplements, and medications—with the goal of applying it to the clinical evaluation of anti-aging therapies and services designed to extend healthy life expectancy. We have also confirmed the detection of microRNAs associated with dementia and Alzheimer's disease in urine, and research is underway to capture whole-body aging signals—including brain aging—through a urine sample.