Dr. James Peyer of ApolloVC discussed tactical paths to bring longevity promoting therapeutics to market as quickly as possible.
The cost of developing a drug is $2.6 billion. Pharma companies need to have each successful drug approved has to pay for ten failed drugs. Each drug from discovery through clinical trials averages out to a cost of $260 million.
Anti-aging companies and anti-aging investors need to focus on an initial aging disease to get approval to treat. They then target a second and third anti-aging disease. After that they can look at trying to follow metformin for general anti-aging approval. Metformin is the first anti-aging treatment that the FDA is looking at for a general antiaging approval.
There is increasing of pharmaceutical company engagement via disease-focused proof of concept trials. This talk was given at the Ending Age-Related Diseases conference in NYC.
Curing all cancers would add 3.5 years to average human lifespan. If anti-aging could delay the start of aging disease from 50 or 60 by two or three decades then this could be ten times better than curing cancer.
$50 billion per year is spent on curing cancer. If medical research was allocated based upon potential impact then anti-aging should be at a funding level of $500 billion per year.
