Nothing like controversy to get good scientists to make better public arguments.
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As to the idea of several IBG's, this would be the ideal scenario, and probably require at least the estimated $62.5 million ($100 million in my opinion) value for the MMP, or more specifically, the Rejuvenation Prize.
Actually, I was thinking about that Reversal/Rejuvenation Prize thing. The new structure allows us to award the prize far more often, as the old structure (the Reversal Prize) would basically require someone to come up with an intervention that doubles remaining life expectancy. Not quite the the tripling (trebling? Is that a British English thing?) that de Grey is calling for, but nonetheless a big step.
I was thinking also of the idea of small, frequent awards versus a single winner-takes-all award. The current formulation allows us to award small increments on the way to the main goal of tripling remaining lifespan. We've had the issue come up of how to sustain interest upon reaching our goal, and the current system seems like it will succeed to some degree. (Though, to be honest, once that tripling is achieved, further incremental gains, while exciting, will nonetheless seem anticlimactic in mice. At this point, the focus should probably shift to a new prize, perhaps in a longer-lived species like dogs or monkeys or lemurs or something.)
I have an idea, and it's just an idea, but here goes. Actually, it's not even my idea, to be honest, as I think John or someone else here raised the idea as well.
I think we should still have a winner-takes-all threshold. The current record for the rejuvenation Prize is 1356 days, an average of 6 mice in the top decile of a controlled study. As I recall, this represented a 15% increase in late life, started at 19 months, so I'm assuming the mean for the control group was therefore about ((1/1.15)*(1356-19*30))+19*30, or about 1253 days.
Actually, checking the math, I see that the 15% lifespan increase was total lifespan, not just the late-life portion. The late-life increase in lifespan was therefore much higher, on the order of 30% or so, just eyeballing the numbers I can find on the web (43.6 months versus 37.6 months, with and without CR). Good to know, as I thought that 15% sounded a bit low for CR.
Okay, so we're at 30% or so. Getting to 50%, if started at 19 months, would require getting out to something like 1454 days, which would award... What? The website is sketchy on the details. The formula is laid out in detail for the Longevity Prize, but not so for the Rejuvenation Prize.
If the RP is awarded the same way as the LP, then the award in this case would be about 6.7% of the RP fund. In other words, with a $10 million Reversal Prize, only about $670,000 of it would be awarded.
So picture the year 2016. What happens for that incremental gain, from adding 155% to adding 205% late life, which takes us past the tripling threshold? What fraction of our $50 million prize would be awarded? About 16%.
I think what we need is, in addition to the current structure, a winner-takes-all threshold once remaining late-life has been tripled. It doesn't need to be a new prize, as having three would only further spread thin our thin resources. However, perhaps we could award half the prize money in addition to awarding the usual small percentage. Just an idea.
For example, using 19 months as our threshold, and assuming a typical control group's mean of top decile at 38 months, then our threshold would be 76 months, or just over six years. Using a nice round number like 2300 days should suffice. So let's say someone gets up to 1985 days, and then a new study takes it all the way to 2380 days. This new study would only net 16.6% of the prize. But if we first award half the prize, then 16.6% of the remaining money, this study, which passed the "tripling" threshold, would actually net 58.3% of the prize money. If we could get the prize up to $100 million, this would be just about the $62.5 million that has been postulated as necessary.
