Today, I want to discuss the urgent need to accelerate the arrival of drugs to treat aging in the clinic. This opinion piece takes a moderately conservative approach, focusing on the regulatory changes necessary to approve new therapies specifically for aging. Currently, regulators only approve therapies for specific diseases of aging, leading to a focus on treating specific age-related diseases rather than aging itself. The author argues that this approach may hinder the development of therapies optimized for treating aging.
The opinion piece outlines lobbying, regulatory change, and industry and patient advocate activities that could speed up the process in the US or EU. However, the author suggests that real progress may require making aging therapies available via medical tourism to accumulate compelling human data and prompt regulatory change. The author encourages a different strategy for longevity biotech companies, suggesting that targeting aging itself preventatively, rather than curatively, and assuming the regulatory risk could be more effective. Ultimately, the goal is to create a market for products that have been clinically proven to slow down the aging process and extend healthy lifespan.
