A few different things could unlock more trials or faster trials:
1. RMR (or an equivalent) leading to all out war on aging: This would cause more trials to occur. We would immediately run into bottlenecks which would cause people to innovate their way out of it to speed up the process.
2. AI powered robotic wet labs: A sufficiently robust artificial intelligence with high quality robotics in a wet lab setting with access to a library of all molecules and all model organisms, deployed at scale, operating 24/7, systematically going through all of the molecules to gain lifespan and healthspan data, with recursive self-improvement leading it to finding patterns in molecule efficacy and trialling combinations leading it to finding combinatorial efficacy, leading it to designing custom molecules that are then created and fed into the library of molecules to trial.
This doesn’t solve the human clinical trial problem, nor do I want humans put into such a system. But it would give us an insane amount of data which would be endlessly useful.
3. Computational biology: Simulating a cell, an organ, an entire body. Digital twins. Aging clocks. Pace of aging clocks. All of this would enable more efficient human clinical trials.
Any of the above would speed up the process of LEV.
More and more I’m thinking we need AI powered robotic wet labs. I don’t think we can do research at the scale necessary with just humans. The grunt work needs to be done relentlessly so we have the data necessary to make more informed choices of what to actually test in humans.
Until this happens we are basically taking a stab in the dark at what could work.
Robotics is likely to become much more advanced over the next 5 years.