I think his statement is a little ambiguous. "to complete the R&D". What do you mean with R&D? If it just refers to pre-clinicals, so yes, we are f***** and human trials won't start next year. (Unfortunately, I think this is the most possible thing he means. Because he said "We don’t know when exactly we’ll get into human clinical trials". I understanded it same as you).
But if "R&D" means to all research stages before the commercialization (including human trials, of course), then is possible to start human trials next year (but again, I think this is not the case).