01/09/19 

The importance of official clinical trials for rejuvenation therapies

A medicine isn't something that a responsible person can simply "try". It's known that medicines usually have collateral effects, even when they are relatively safe and effective. If there is a considerable doubt about the safety of a medicine, it's reasonable to only take it as a last resource, in an extreme situation. And the most socially trusted way to verify the safety of a medicine is through state-supervised clinical trials. This may seem pretty obvious, but it's important to emphasize this fact with the rejuvenation community, because the excitement with animal-model tests or with the initial phases of human clinical trials, despite being completely justifiable in this community, is far from being shared by the general public. It's true that the animal-model tests and the initial human trials are an important part of the whole process of official approval, and allow the existence of the next phases of the process. However, if the whole approval process isn't completed, people in general won't use the rejuvenation therapies, and we can't forget that the main goal is that we, our relatives, friends, coworkers, neighbors, clients, employees, bosses — I mean, regular people — could rejuvenate and become free of the certain deterioration and death caused by aging.

Thus, in the current state of the rejuvenation endeavor, with a few senolytic drugs entering the advanced phases of human clinical trials, it's very important that the rejuvenation community pays special attention to the clinical trials progress and share with the rest of society the eventual positive results, because those results would convince the general public to support the rejuvenation endeavor. When a major governmental regulatory agency approves a senolytic drug — only then — the general public of the world will consider it to be safe to use. Only then physicians will prescribe senolytics for their patients. Only then pharmaceutical companies will invest all they can in publicity for senolytics. Only then drugstores will sell senolytics. And only then people will start to rejuvenate.

There are some initiatives in the rejuvenation community regarding self-experimentation of different kinds of senolytics which are already available. However, the degree of scientific accuracy needed to verify the safety and efficiency of these drugs can only be reached through a very organized process, and self-experimentation usually is a very atomized and uncoordinated process. In the view of a person who isn't familiar with the rejuvenation therapies, self-experimentation isn't reliable as a guarantee of safety or efficiency. So although self-experimentation seems to be sometimes easier and cheaper than official clinical trials, it doesn't look like a viable option in terms of the rejuvenation therapies popularization, which could begin with senolyitics.

Therefore, if state-supervised clinical trials are vital for the sucess of the rejuvenation endeavor, the way the state is formed and deals with this matter deserves as well a great attention from the rejuvenation community. However, we all know that discussing politics, for some anthropologic reason, usually makes people enter a state of mind in which it's very easy to become hostile with people who think differently. In that sense, it's very interesting the Party of Health Research strategy, in Germany, which focus only on the rejuvenation medicine. Their case should be carefully studied by the global rejuvenation community.

Thus, to spread the word about the results of the official clinical trials, and to be active about how the state deals with the clinical trials issue are two important activities for the rejuvenation community regarding official clinical trials. What else our community could do to help the clinical trials with senolytics (and other rejuvenation technologies) to succeed?

Deep down, we know the answer. As almost everybody in the rejuvenation area knows, human clinical trials are very expansive. So a huge problem usually is the lack of financial resources to carry them out. Obviously, very rich advocates could help by investing in companies which could carry out the clinical trials, and by trying to persuade other rich people to do the same. This strategy is already been implemented in the rejuvenation community, but the number of rich people is far smaller than the total number of people. Fortunately, non-rich people also have a way to help these companies to get the needed financial resources: raising the profit expectation of potential investors through the two strategies mentioned before — spreading the word about the results of the early phases of the clinical trials, and working to avoid problems in state regulation of clinical trials. If potential investors think that the medicines will work, and that these medicines will be authorized to be sold, they probably will invest in companies which could perform these clinical trials, because they already know that the market for effective rejuvenation therapies would be huge.

Taking this scenario into account, it would be worth for the rejuvenation community to focus on human clinical trials of senolytics. In the next few years, the first senolytics will probably reach the market, and that will be a moment which we should be prepared for. It will be the moment in which the general public will really pay attention to senolytics, to rejuvenation therapies, and to the rejuvenation community, because the rejuvenation medicines will reach the general public in the same way that all the other medicines reached them throughout the years: by going to the doctor, the doctor prescribing a medicine, buying it in the drugstore, and taking the medicine. The difference is that, in the case of rejuvenation medicines, if they really are effective, people will realize that the future has arrived.

Nicolas Chernavsky