The tree · Window · Happens to the world · Could be decided within 1 to 5 years
A drug regulator accepts a biological measure of aging as a trial's primary endpoint
Trials of aging drugs today have to wait for disease or death, which takes decades and is why nobody runs them. A regulator accepting a biological measure of aging (an epigenetic clock, say, a blood test that reads how old a person's cells behave) as the primary endpoint of a pivotal trial would shorten those trials from decades to years. It is a separate rung between the 2015 composite-endpoint precedent and an approvable indication, and it is what would make a first approved aging drug arrive inside a working lifetime rather than after one.
The test: what counts as it having happened
The US Food and Drug Administration or the European Medicines Agency accepts, in published guidance, a qualified-biomarker decision, or the published design of a pivotal trial it has agreed to, a biological measure of aging (an epigenetic, proteomic, or equivalent molecular clock) as the primary endpoint on which a drug may be approved, in place of a clinical outcome such as disease onset or death.
Settled by: The regulator's published guidance, biomarker qualification record, or the agreed trial design on the public registry
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55% | 60% | 70% | 85% | 90% |
Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of 2026-09-20.
Why these numbers: Biomarker qualification programs exist and aging clocks are improving fast, but no clock is yet validated as a surrogate for outcomes and regulators are slow to accept surrogates that have not predicted a hard endpoint in a trial; priced at the indication node's level because the two rungs rise and fall together. Proposed by Claude 2026-09-20 with the node's addition, accepted by John.
What this one is worth
Nothing. The headline number does not rest on this step at any remove, so however it turns out, the chance that I live and work off Earth does not change. That is not a judgement that it does not matter — it is what the tree says: this step feeds a tier above the one the headline asks about, or sits beside the equation rather than in it.
The last 3 checks
Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.
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2026-10-11 Nothing new
No regulator has accepted an aging clock as a primary endpoint; no epigenetic clock is qualified in FDA's biomarker program, and the 2026-05-27 Reagan-Udall meeting was discussion only.
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2026-10-08 Nothing new
No qualification, guidance or agreed pivotal design using an aging clock as primary endpoint appeared; as of August 2026 epigenetic clocks are not among the eight qualified FDA biomarkers.
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2026-10-04 Nothing new
No FDA or EMA qualification, guidance or agreed pivotal design using an aging clock as primary endpoint appeared; as of August 2026 epigenetic clocks are not among the eight biomarkers qualified, and the 2026-09-07 Insilico framework paper is a proposal, already noted last scan.
Notes
Added 2026-09-20 under step 27, item 1 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md, ruled 2026-09-19): raised by Gemini as a missing node; gates W-first-drug-approved-to-slow-aging beside the indication node. The caution from item 31 applies: this is a rung toward approval, not a prerequisite for the death-rate trial or the lifespan record.
Think this is wrong, missing something it depends on, or badly estimated?
Open an issue about it, or read
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The record itself is data/W-window.toml in the public repository.