Fight Aging!

The year-end fundraiser in support of the SENS Research Foundation kicks off today - and all donations are matched dollar for dollar. Funds raised will, as always, go towards speeding up and unblocking currently languishing fields of research that are necessary for the production of effective, working rejuvenation therapies in the years ahead. The SENS Research Foundation has a proven track record on this front, and for years now has used the philanthropic donations provided by our community to generate meaningful progress in research like mitochondrial repair, clearance of senescent cells, clearance of cross-links that stiffen tissues, building the basis for a universal cancer therapy, and much more. More than just funding research directly, the SENS Research Foundation has also brought new attention and new sources of funding to formerly stuck and slow moving fields of research, and is working to assemble the biotechnology industry needed to move research from lab to clinic. This is working: areas like senescent cell clearance that ten years ago were going nowhere are now heading towards clinical therapies by leaps and bounds.

There is much more to be done yet, however! When the wheel is finally starting to turn, that is no time to slacken in our support. This is why Josh Triplett and Fight Aging! have put up a $24,000 matching fund, and will match the next year of donations for anyone that signs up as a SENS Patron. Head over the SENS Research Foundation site, take a look at their new home page presentation that shows off the high points of this past year of achievements, and pledge a recurring monthly donation. Every dollar you give that way over the next year, we'll match. This support makes a real difference, but don't take our word for it. David Spiegel is a noted researcher who runs the Spiegel Research Group at Yale University and works on finding ways to safely remove glucosepane cross-linking, one of the forms of tissue damage that causes aging. In his view, funding from the SENS Research Foundation has been instrumental to the creation of important progress in this field:

The SENS Research Foundation funding has been critical to our work studying and developing methods to reverse the effects of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) in aging. AGEs are non-enzymatic modifications that build up on proteins as people age, leading to inflammation and tissue damage. Early on, our lab focused significant effort on developing the first total synthesis of glucosepane - a major AGE cross-link found in human tissues - but we were unable to find funding from any of the traditional sources. The SENS Research Foundation came to our aid, and supported this research for over 5 years. In 2015, our glucosepane synthesis efforts were published in Science, and lay a foundation for developing drugs capable of detecting and reversing tissue damage in aging. We are deeply grateful to the SENS Research Foundation and Fight Aging! for all of their support and look forward to exciting, life-extending work to come!

If becoming a SENS Patron for the long term isn't for you, then you can still make a year-end charitable donation to support this research and have it matched, as the Forever Healthy Foundation has put up a $150,000 matching fund for donations made between now and the end of the year. You might recall that this is Michael Greve's venture, and earlier this year he pledged $10 million to SENS rejuvenation research, half to advance the research, and half to support the startup companies that will be needed to take these therapies to the marketplace. It is more or less our duty as a community to ensure that this matching fund is met, as thanks for his generous support of these vitally important scientific projects. We will all live that much better and that much longer in the future as a result. From the latest SENS Research Foundation newsletter:

SENS Research Foundation's year end fundraising goal this year is $150,000. Every dollar that you contribute will be matched by the generous grant we have received from the Forever Healthy Foundation. So every dollar you give will be turned into $2 with the Forever Healthy Foundation's support. Please help us reach our $150,000 goal (which could turn into $300,000 thanks to the matching grant!) by donating generously today! Remember, your support is crucial to our continued fight against age-related disease.

Finally, please help spread the word. Mention the work of the SENS Research Foundation in your circles. Talk to your friends. A movement is made up of many small efforts, one person talking to another. That is how the tipping point of support is reached, how bootstrapping towards large-scale support for the development of rejuvenation therapies works. By all means make use of these simple fundraising posters as well. As they say, aging is a medical condition, and it is well past time to treat it like one.

2016 SENS Patron Fundraiser #1: 4200 x 2800px and 600 x 400px

2016 SENS Patron Fundraiser #2: 4200 x 2800px and 600 x 400px