TL;DR
For the first time, the U.S. drug regulator is putting aging itself on its agenda. Senior FDA officials said this month that aging and longevity will appear in the agency's next list of regulatory-science priorities, and they sketched what it would take for a drug to be approved as an aging treatment: proof that it helps several age-related diseases at once, or that it slows the decline of physical and mental abilities. That is not a rule, and no drug has met the bar. But it turns "anti-aging" from marketing into a target with a shape. The government is already paying for the evidence, and the first drug to get there might be one already sold for something else, such as the obesity drug semaglutide. On the regulator's own math, the payoff is a 2030s story.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 5 milestones, starting with "The FDA publishes its updated regulatory-science priorities report naming aging by 2027"; our labeled speculation on what it adds up to; and every source.