SENS Foundation Year End Appeal

It's that time again - the season to arrange your last charitable gifts for the 2011 tax year. The SENS Foundation founders have put out a call for donations:

Dear Friends,
The diseases of aging - heart disease, Alzheimer's, macular degeneration - are not only terrible, tragic, and debilitating, but potentially preventable. SENS Foundation is working to use regenerative medicine to repair the cellular and molecular damage that accumulates in all of our bodies over time. With the right application of such treatments, we could slow, or even reverse, the pathology of aging.

We call these innovative, damage-repairing treatments rejuvenation biotechnologies. In human and economic terms, their successful development would represent an incredible victory. And yet, research into rejuvenation biotechnologies has received virtually no public funding. SENS Foundation has yet to receive monetary support from any government body. Other organizations in the field are in a similar position - the Mayo Clinic, for instance, was recently denied funding by the NIH for follow-up work on its landmark senescent cell study published in Nature.

If rejuvenation biotechnologies are to be developed, private donors will need to step forward. SENS Foundation has led, and continues to lead, the charge towards robust therapies that address the diseases of aging. We are working ceaselessly to advance rejuvenation biotechnologies in the following ways:

We fund scientific work at universities and research institutes across the world - including, next year, a new project and lab at Cambridge University.

We conduct our own in-house research at the rapidly-expanding SENS Foundation Research Center in Mountain View, California, which has nearly doubled its staff in 2011.

We develop the next generation of researchers focused on the development of rejuvenation biotechnologies through our Academic Initiative, which continues to award research grants to talented and enthusiastic university students.

We conduct outreach and forge new connections between individuals and organizations to grow the rejuvenation biotechnology field.

We hold conferences, most recently SENS5 in September of this year, to bring some of the world's most capable scientists together in one room to discuss the future of medicine.

SENS Foundation is a pioneer in the fledgling industry of rejuvenation biotechnology. We have a highly talented and ever-growing team of researchers, expanding facilities, and considerable experience in the field. Out work has the potential to make modern treatments for age-related diseases markedly more effective, but is gravely underfunded. For this reason, your contribution could have a huge impact on our organization and, as a result, on medicine itself.

We deeply appreciate the donations we have received thus far, and urge you to consider contributing to our cause. We know of none greater: that is why we have focused our careers on overcoming the diseases of aging. Either way - whether or not you choose to give - please accept our whole team's warmest holiday wishes.

SENS Foundation is, in my view, the best place for most people to invest in the future of human longevity. The Foundation continues to strongly influence the research community behind the scenes, and that influence will grow as the Foundation gains the funding to prove ever more of the SENS view of rejuvenation biotechnology correct. The progress made to date has already drawn the support of renowned scientists in the fields of aging research and regenerative medicine, and as this train continues to pick up speed, it will convert ever more of the research community into supporters and participants in the development of rejuvenation biotechnology.

Folk like you and I have made this a going concern over the past seven years by supporting the Methuselah Foundation and then SENS Foundation after the SENS research program was spun off into its own organization. These foundations have grown from simple ideas an a couple of small early donations to become multi-million dollar organizations on the strength of our support. That was just the start - and we can help keep this momentum going through our donations. I strongly recommend that you look over the last annual reports issued by the SENS Foundation, so that you can see just how much work is being done and read about progress in their research programs:

Fight Aging!