Identification and Adoption of Novel Biomarkers and Endpoints for Healthy Longevity Initiatives

[madman]

A major focus among those working in aging research and the preemption of chronic diseases is the identification of biomarkers.

The field is intensively searching for biomarkers, surrogate markers, and registrable endpoints that can lead to the approval of therapeutic interventions without having to conduct impractically long, excessively large clinical trials.

Join this discussion of tractable efforts underway or under consideration by a roundtable of thought leaders.

 

[madman]

 

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[madman]

 

[Guided_by_Voices]

One of the problems with this approach (which they accidentally demonstrate by calling Vitamin D a "failed" surrogate) is that very few anti-aging interventions are likely to be very effective as stand-alone therapies. The body is incredibly complex with numerous redundancies, overlaps and feedback loops, so if something doesn't appear to "work" as a stand-alone therapy that does not necessarily mean it is not still valuable or necessary. For example, Vitamin D needs Vitamin A and other co-factors like magnesium to work well as a supplement, and that ignores that getting it from the sun in sufficient doses is also likely advantageous, while sun exposure does lots of other good things as well. For the foreseeable future we are just going to have to do everything that seems like it might work and probably won't hurt.