The beauty of studying aging in C. elegans is that they have very short lifespans, so there's a chance of knowing whether an intervention (e.g. heat shock) has an effect (spoiler: it does). Also, elegans is transparent, so you can see what's going on internally non-invasively.

Breakthroughs there can move to our closer relatives, lab mice. Studies in mouse longevity are millions of dollars (AKA stupid expensive) but even more expensive (not to mention difficult to the point of impossibility) with humans.

But having a usable set of biomarkers, particularly ones from the blood, rather than needing biopsies, means that interventions that have shown promise in mouse studies can potentially move on to humans.

I'd argue that we actually *are* in a golden age - and these markers might be able to move it forward. But even without them, there will be individuals making use of what's learned in animal studies (metformin, rapamycin, caloric restriction, heat shock, etc.) which may provide some useful data - and even with known serum markers, I don't expect long term clinical trials anytime soon. Part of that is just the nature of "long term", but double blind studies will likely only get funded if a drug company expects a major return on investment.

Disclaimer, non-bio guy here. I'm learning about all this in the time I used to use being distracted by Trump's brand of malicious incompetence (or maybe it was incompetent malice).