The Amaranth Foundation on Bottlenecks in Aging Research
The Amaranth Foundation is one of a small number of organizations created by high net worth individuals to accelerate progress towards the development of therapies to treat aging, picking and choosing research programs and biotech startups to fund based on the founders' understanding of the science and favored goals. Amaranth has a strong focus on neuroscience, for example. The Amaranth pitch on the importance of focusing on bottlenecks in the research and development process is a more general call to action, however, and an interesting take on how best philanthropic organizations should direct their efforts in order to speed up the advent of human rejuvenation.
By 2029, the United States will spend $3 trillion dollars every year - half its federal budget - on adults aged 65 and older. By the same year, nearly 20 million Americans will die from age-related illnesses. Yet research on the biology of aging remains overlooked. Despite a 70-fold increase in funding for aging research since the last decade, the incentives of governments and for-profit investment do not always lend themselves to early bets on ambitious science or field-building. Amaranth is committed to filling this gap by funding moonshot approaches to longevity while expanding the field's talent pool.
In 2022, the Amaranth Advisory Board - a group of leading experts in longevity and neuroscience - convened to address the bottlenecks hindering progress in extending healthy human lifespan. During the meeting, the group enumerated focus areas that require philanthropic investment. Over the last two years (2021-2023), we've directed over $30M of funding to scientific labs, policy-makers, educational initiatives, and prize funding to further the most promising research in these overlooked areas.
Here, we outline initiatives which, if executed, could meaningfully accelerate the advancement of aging science and other life-extending technologies. The resulting document is a philanthropic menu, for which Amaranth is seeking both talent to execute on and co-funders.