We had an interesting fail this week. No lasting consequences, but it was close. The cause was a pharma-instilled framework that was not only inapplicable to aging drug dev, but actually contrary to developing a good drug. None of us were aware until a 3rd party pointed it out

Most of our near misses to date take this flavor - a well validated, well tested drug development framework that totally fails when applied to aging drug dev. We have to be really explicit about our assumptions One reason why I think the pharmas will be very late to aging.

@celinehalioua In early immunooncology clinical trials, failure was defined as a growing tumor just like other cancer drugs. Here's the problem: A good immune response involves swelling - the tumors that initially grew were often the ones the immunotherapy was working in, but trials got nixed!

@andrewgrayusc yes! that is a really good example of this phenomena