From the Methuselah Foundation: 2012, the Year in Review
This turned up from the Methuselah Foundation in my in-box today, and I thought I'd share. Remember that their donation page is just a click away, as is the fundraising challenge at the New Organ Prize:
Dear Friend,
In the spirit of the season, we've been looking back on the last year at Methuselah Foundation and appreciating everything we have to be thankful for. And we want you to know that you're at the top of the list. Without our many donors, colleagues, partners, and friends, we could never do what we do. We're so grateful for your ongoing support, and we'd like to thank you for believing so fervently, like we do, in the enormous promise of regenerative medicine for extending healthy human life.
2012: Year in Review
Thanks to your generosity, Methuselah made significant progress in 2012 on our flagship project, the New Organ Prize. We launched a beta website at neworgan.org and kicked off our first campaign to raise $100,000 and inspire 100 people to become "New Organizers." We quadrupled the size of our online community at facebook.com/neworganprize. We're collaborating with the gifted filmmaker Michael Marantz (The Future is Ours) on a video highlighting regenerative medicine as a lasting solution to the organ crisis. We've been working with tissue engineering pioneers like Dr. Anthony Atala, Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, and Dr. Gabor Forgacs to beging shaping prize rules and criteria. And as we enter December, we're only $20,000 away from reaching our $100,000 goal for New Organ in 2012.
Investing in the Future
This year, we also located a beautiful piece of land in the U.S. Virgin Islands for our long-planned monument to the Methuselah 300. One of the promising young companies we've invested in, Organovo, has been making a splash, going public in record time, winning a critical patent, and appearing on Technology Review's list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2012. Another young company we've invested in, Silverstone Solutions, also made headlines this year by enabling several life-saving paired kidney transplants at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco using their sophisticated kidney-matching software powered by cloud computing, saving at least 50 lives. We continue to scour the landscape for disruptive longevity advancing companies, and expect great things from Organovo and Silverstone in 2013.
Looking Forward Together
The field of regenerative medicine is truly coming of age, with growing public interest and more press coverage during the past six months than at any time we can remember. We even saw a Nobel Prize in Medicine this year for Dr. Shinya Yamanaka and Dr. John Gurdon's work on pluripotent stem cells.
From all of us at the Methuselah Foundation, happy holidays, and thank you once again for everything you do. We're looking forward to sharing an even brighter 2013 with you.
Warm regards,
David Gobel
Methuselah CEO