Successful anti-aging would be over ten times better than curing all cancer

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.