Methuselah Foundation

Methuselah Foundation
Founded2003 (2003)
FoundersAubrey de Grey & David Gobel
Type501(c)(3)
FocusLife extension, rejuvenation, tissue engineering
Location
  • Springfield, Virginia, U.S.
Area served
Global
MethodNew Organ Prize, Mprize, research grants, angel investing
Websitewww.mfoundation.org

The Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit organization with a declared mission to "make 90 the new 50 by 2030" by supporting tissue engineering and regenerative medicine therapies.[1] It was co-founded in 2003 by David Gobel and Aubrey de Grey.[2] Their work includes:

  • incubating and investing in early-stage life science companies[3]
  • funding scientific research[4]
  • providing fiscal sponsorship to aligned projects[5]
  • sponsoring inducement prizes.[6]

The charity was named after Methuselah, the grandfather of Noah in the Hebrew Bible, whose lifespan was recorded as 969 years.

The foundation was originally conceived in 2000 by David Gobel as the Longitude Prize Society,[7] named after the British government's Longitude Act, which set up monetary rewards for anyone who could devise a portable, practical solution for determining a ship's longitude. In 2003, the organization was made public as the Methuselah Foundation at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the American Aging Association,[7] where they awarded the first Methuselah Mouse Prize to Andrej Bartke for his work on mice that lived the equivalent of 180 human years.[8]

Current projects

Methuselah Fund

The Methuselah Fund was created as an LLC subsidiary of the Methuselah Foundation to incubate and invest in early-stage companies. The first investments were made in:[3]

  • Organovo, a company working in the field of 3D bioprinting;
  • Silverstone Solutions, a maker of kidney-matching software that enables hospitals and transplant organizations to more quickly and accurately pair patients with compatible donors (acquired by BiologicTx in 2013);[9][10]
  • Oisin Biotechnologies a company aiming to remove senescent cells, commonly seen as a hallmark of aging;[11][12]
  • Leucadia Therapeutics, a company working to address Alzheimer's disease by restoring the flow of cerebrospinal fluid across the cribriform plate.[13]

New Organ Alliance

The Methuselah Foundation fiscally sponsors the New Organ Alliance, an initiative aimed at raising awareness and facilitating research to help alleviate organ donation shortages.[14][15] In 2013, the foundation announced the New Organ Liver Prize, a $1,000,000 award to the first team that can create a bioengineered or regenerative liver therapy for a "large mammal, enabling the host to recover in the absence of native liver function and survive three months with a normal lifestyle."[16][17]

The initiative is held in partnership with the Organ Preservation Alliance. New Organ Alliance worked out a technology roadmap report for organ banking and bioengineering solutions to help address organ shortages.[18] The roadmap was developed through a workshop in May 2015 in Washington, D.C., along with a subsequent roundtable held by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. It is funded from the National Science Foundation[19] and Methuselah Foundation. Two follow-up perspectives were published, "The Promise of Organ and Tissue Preservation to Transform Medicine"[20] and "Bioengineering Priorities on a Path to Ending Organ Shortage".[21]

In 2016, NASA in partnership with the New Organ Alliance announced the Vascular Tissue Challenge.[22][23] Creating a sufficient blood vessel system – vasculature – is often seen by biomedical researchers as a primary impediment in engineering thick tissues.[24][25] The Vascular Tissue Challenge offers a $500,000 prize "to be divided among the first three teams that successfully create thick, metabolically-functional human vascularized organ tissue in a controlled laboratory environment."[26]

In November 2016, in conjunction with the Vascular Tissue Challenge, the New Organ Alliance hosted at the NASA Research Park the Vascular Tissue Challenge Roadmapping Workshop, with funding from the NSF.[27][28]

Methuselah Mouse Prize

The Methuselah Mouse Prize (Mprize) was created to increase scientific and public interest in longevity research[29] by awarding two cash prizes: "one to the research team that broke the world record for the oldest-ever mouse; and one to the team that developed the most successful late-onset rejuvenation strategy."[30] The Mprize was announced publicly in 2003 by David Gobel and Aubrey de Grey at the American Aging Association.[7] The prize for longevity was first won by a research team led by Andrzej Bartke of Southern Illinois University.[31] The prize for rejuvenation first went to Stephen Spindler of the University of California, Riverside.[32] Additionally, in 2009, the first Mprize Lifespan Achievement Award went to Z. Dave Sharp of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio for extending the lifespan of already aged mice using the pharmaceutical rapamycin.[33][34]

In May 2014, at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Aging Association, Methuselah Foundation awarded a $10,000 Mprize to Huber Warner for his founding of the National Institute on Aging's Interventions Testing Program.[35][36][37]

3D bioprinter grants

In 2013, Methuselah Foundation began a partnership with Organovo to fund the use of their 3D bioprinters at academic research centers for biomedical research.[38] Under the grant program, the foundation committed "at least $500,000 in direct funding for research projects across several institutions."[39] The first recipients were Yale School of Medicine,[40] UCSF School of Medicine,[41] and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute.[42]

Past projects

Bowhead Whale Genome

In 2015, with funding from the Methuselah Foundation and Life Extension Foundation, the bowhead whale genome was sequenced by João Pedro de Magalhães and his team at the University of Liverpool.[43] The bowhead whale is possibly the longest-lived mammal, capable of living over 200 years.[44] The genome project was undertaken to learn more about the mammal's mechanisms for longevity and resistance to age-related diseases, which are unknown.[44] An assembly of the bowhead whale genome has been made available online to promote further research.[45]

Organ Preservation Alliance

In 2013, Methuselah began fiscally sponsoring and collaborating with the Organ Preservation Alliance, an initiative coordinating research and stakeholders for the preservation of tissues and organs.[2][46][47][48] The organization's activities have included:

  • hosting Organ Banking Summits,[49][50]
  • developing a technology roadmap for organ banking,[18]
  • creating the first Organ and Tissue Preservation Community of Practice with the American Society of Transplantation,[51]
  • organizing an "Organs on Demand" workshop at the U.S. Military Academy,[52]
  • publishing an expert-consensus article on organ preservation in Nature Biotechnology,[20][53]
  • contributing to the Department of Defense's five organ-banking grant programs, seeding an "estimated $15 million into collaborations among 35 groups."[54][55]

Supercentenarian Research Foundation

In 2006, Methuselah contributed capital and fiscal sponsorship to launch the Supercentenarian Research Foundation (SRF).[2] SRF was formed to study why supercentenarians, people over 110 years of age, live longer than most, and why they die.[56] Eight autopsies of supercentenarians were conducted by SRF, with six indicating senile cardiac transthyretin amyloidosis at the time of death. With this disease, a defective protein "amasses in and clogs blood vessels, forcing the heart to work harder and eventually fail."[57][58]

SENS Research Foundation

From 2003 to 2009,[2] Methuselah Foundation served as the backbone organization for the strategies for engineered negligible senescence (SENS) program, a long-term research framework developed by Aubrey de Grey.[59] The SENS program aims to prevent or reverse seven forms of molecular or cellular damage associated with aging.[60]

During that time, de Grey and David Gobel established SENS-related research programs on human bioremedial biology – "getting the crud out" in Methuselah's parlance[61] – at Rice University and Arizona State University.[4] The programs were the first use of environmental remediation principles directed at reversing "pollution" in human cells.[62] Additionally, Methuselah sponsored a series of SENS-focused roundtables and conferences,[63] and funded the writing of Ending Aging, co-authored by de Grey and Michael Rae.

Under de Grey's continued leadership, SENS spun out from Methuselah as the SENS Research Foundation in 2009.[2]

Donors

Due to the close relationship between the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Research Foundation and their common activities, there are sometimes misunderstandings about their budgets, directions, and amounts of donations which can be distributed between these organizations for various purposes.

In 2004, the Methuselah Foundation began a donor initiative called "The Methuselah 300" ("The 300"),[64] a community of philanthropic donors pledging $25,000 over 25 years, at a minimum of $1,000 annually, toward the organization. The initiative was named after the 300 Spartans who held the pass at Thermopylae in 480 BC during the Greco-Persian War. In addition, in 2015, the foundation began memorializing The 300 donors with a monument[65] at St. Thomas Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

On September 16, 2006, Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of the online payments system PayPal, announced that he was pledging $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation and the SENS programs "to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging".[66]

In 2007, Justin Bonomo, a professional poker player, pledged 5% of his tournament winnings to SENS research.[67][68]

In January 2018, the anonymous principal of the Pineapple Fund donated $1 million to the Methuselah Foundation,[69] in addition to $2 million donated to SENS Research Foundation.[70][71]

On May 12, 2021, Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency scientist and magnate, made a series of donations to the foundation. The three transfers, made minutes apart, contained 432 trillion Dogelon Mars, worth about $336 million at the time of transfer,[72][73] and two transfers of 1000 Ether in total, worth more than $2 million.[74][75][76]

References

  1. ↑ Page "About Us" on the site of Methuselah Foundation (Retrieved 2021-04-06)
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Progress in SENS Rejuvenation Research Over the Past 15 Years". Fight Aging!. 2017-06-30.
  3. 1 2 "Methuselah Foundation Launches Methuselah Fund". Fight Aging!. 2017-03-22.
  4. 1 2 Watkins, Jenn (2009-01-16). "Researchers seek to create 'fountain of youth'".
  5. ↑ "New Organ - NASA". neworgan.org. Archived from the original on 2018-12-31. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  6. ↑ Williams, Matt. "History of Challenges: New Organ Prize (2013 - Present)". HeroX. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  7. 1 2 3 Gobel, D. (2004-07-01). "Methuselah Foundation". Rejuvenation Research. 7 (2): 154–159. doi:10.1089/1549168041553035. ISSN 1549-1684. PMID 15312303.
  8. ↑ "A Methuselah of Mice Dies in Lab". Huron Daily Tribune. 2003-01-16. – updated 2016-04-25
  9. ↑ "Silverstone Solutions". Archived from the original on 2014-05-24. Retrieved 2014-07-23.
  10. ↑ "BiologicTx MatchGrid". Archived from the original on 2018-07-09.
  11. ↑ Page "The Approach" on the site of the company Oisin Biotechnologies
  12. ↑ Carlos López-Otín, Maria A. Blasco, Linda Partridge, Manuel Serrano, Guido Kroemer (2013-06-06). "The Hallmarks of Aging". Cell. 153 (6): 1194–1217. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.039. PMC 3836174. PMID 23746838.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  13. ↑ Page "About Us" on the site of the company Leucadia Therapeutics
  14. ↑ "New Organ Alliance". neworgan.org. Archived from the original on 2016-04-01. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  15. ↑ Dvorsky, George (2015-02-02). "How We'll Finally Put An End To Organ Donation Shortages". io9.
  16. ↑ "New Organ Liver Prize". neworgan.org. Archived from the original on 2017-05-11. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  17. ↑ Diep, Francie (2013-12-19). "Foundation Offers $1 Million Prize For A Bioengineered Liver". Popular Science.
  18. 1 2 "Solving Organ Shortage through Organ Banking and Bioengineering" (PDF). Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  19. ↑ "NSF Award Search: Award#1759748 - Bioengineering of Organs Road-Map Summit". nsf.gov. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  20. 1 2 Giwa, Sebastian; et al. (June 7, 2017). "The promise of organ and tissue preservation to transform medicine". Nature Biotechnology. 35 (6): 530–542. doi:10.1038/nbt.3889. ISSN 1546-1696. PMC 5724041. PMID 28591112.
  21. ↑ Tsukamoto, Ann; et al. (January 5, 2016). "Challenging Regeneration to Transform Medicine". Stem Cells Translational Medicine. 5 (1): 1–7. doi:10.5966/sctm.2015-0180. ISSN 2157-6564. PMC 4704880. PMID 26607174.
  22. ↑ Weitering, Hanneke (2016-06-23). "NASA Seeks Lab-Grown Tissue for Space-Radiation Studies". Space.com.
  23. ↑ Giges, Nancy S. (2016-10-30). "Growing Human Organs in Space". ASME.org.
  24. ↑ Kim, Joseph J.; Hou, Luqia; Huang, Ngan F. (2016-09-01). "Vascularization of Three-Dimensional Engineered Tissues for Regenerative Medicine Applications". Acta Biomaterialia. 41: 17–26. doi:10.1016/j.actbio.2016.06.001. ISSN 1742-7061. PMC 4969172. PMID 27262741.
  25. ↑ Visconti, Richard P; Kasyanov, Vladimir; Gentile, Carmine; Zhang, Jing; Markwald, Roger R; Mironov, Vladimir (March 2010). "Towards organ printing: engineering an intra-organ branched vascular tree". Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy. 10 (3): 409–420. doi:10.1517/14712590903563352. ISSN 1471-2598. PMC 4580374. PMID 20132061.
  26. ↑ Harbaugh, Jennifer (2016-06-06). "NASA's Centennial Challenges: Vascular Tissue Challenge". NASA. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  27. ↑ "New Organ - VTC Workshop". neworgan.org. Archived from the original on 2017-03-05. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  28. ↑ "NSF Award Search: Award#1642055 - Vascular Tissue Road-mapping Workshop & Micro-gravity Impact Roundtable". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  29. ↑ Bailey, Ronald (2004-08-18). "Methuselah Mouse". Reason.com.
  30. ↑ "Work-page at the official site". mfoundation.org. Archived from the original on 2018-04-08. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  31. ↑ Sprague, Valerie (2003-09-04). "Battle for 'old mouse' prize". BBC News Online.
  32. ↑ Christensen, Bill (2004-12-01). "First Methuselah Mouse Rejuvenation 'M Prize' Awarded". Live Science.
  33. ↑ Harrison, David E; Strong, Randy; Sharp, Zelton Dave; et al. (2009-07-08). "Rapamycin fed late in life extends lifespan in genetically heterogeneous mice". Nature. 460 (7253): 392–395. Bibcode:2009Natur.460..392H. doi:10.1038/nature08221. PMC 2786175. PMID 19587680.
  34. ↑ "A Special Mprize Award". Fight Aging!. 2009-10-05.
  35. ↑ "Methuselah Foundation Announces Methuselah Prize Award to Dr. Huber Warner". RedOrbit. 2014-05-30. Archived from the original on 2014-07-28.
  36. ↑ "Methuselah Foundation Announces Award to Dr. Huber Warner". Fight Aging!. 2014-06-02.
  37. ↑ "Interventions Testing Program (ITP)". National Institute on Aging. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  38. ↑ Kaelin, Brooke (2013-08-01). "Organovo and Methuselah Foundation Announce Funding of Bioprinting Research". 3D Printer World. Archived from the original on 2018-12-31. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  39. ↑ "Press Release | Investors | Organovo". Organovo. 2013-07-24.
  40. ↑ Milkert, Heidi (2014-12-03). "Organovo and Yale Announce Collaboration on 3D Bioprinting for Organ Transplantion | 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing". 3DPrint.com.
  41. ↑ Connors, Tarcy (2016-06-13). "Organovo, UCSF to Collaborate to Develop 3-D Bioprinted Tissue". San Diego Business Journal.
  42. ↑ Florance, Adam (2017-01-25). "Bioprinted kidneys". LabOnline.
  43. ↑ Feltman, Rachel (2015-01-06). "Researchers hope this whale's genes will help reverse human aging". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  44. 1 2 Keane, Michael; et al. (2015-01-06). "Insights into the Evolution of Longevity from the Bowhead Whale Genome". Cell Reports. 10 (1): 112–122. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2014.12.008. ISSN 2211-1247. PMC 4536333. PMID 25565328.
  45. ↑ "The Bowhead Whale Genome Resource". www.bowhead-whale.org. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  46. ↑ www.organpreservationalliance.org – site of the Organ Preservation Alliance
  47. ↑ Scudellari, Megan (2015-03-04). "U.S. Funds Efforts to Freeze Human Organs for Long-Term Storage". Scientific American.
  48. ↑ "The Future of Organ Banking". The Alliance of Advanced BioMedical Engineering. 2017-07-31.
  49. ↑ Brown, Alan (2017-08-21). "Breakthroughs Fuel Organ Banking Summit". The Alliance of Advanced BioMedical Engineering.
  50. ↑ Lewis, Jedediah K.; et al. (2016-04-01). "The Grand Challenges of Organ Banking: Proceedings from the first global summit on complex tissue cryopreservation". Cryobiology. 72 (2): 169–182. doi:10.1016/j.cryobiol.2015.12.001. ISSN 0011-2240. PMID 26687388.
  51. ↑ McDannell, Libby (2016-12-22). "White House Highlights AST's New Initiative with Organ Preservation Alliance". American Society of Transplantation.
  52. ↑ "Organs On-Demand:Vision-Setting Workshop on an Organ Banking 'Apollo Program'" (PDF). United States Military Academy. 2015-08-06.
  53. ↑ Young, Leslie (2017-06-08). "Researchers unite in global call to speed organ preservation progress - Faculty of Engineering - University of Alberta". University of Alberta. Archived from the original on 2017-11-12.
  54. ↑ Scudellari, Megan (2017-12-12). "Core Concept: Cryopreservation aims to engineer novel ways to freeze, store, and thaw organs". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (50): 13060–13062. doi:10.1073/pnas.1717588114. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5740646. PMID 29233932.
  55. ↑ "The Military's Organ and Tissue Banking". 2015-01-27. Archived from the original on 2019-04-30.
  56. ↑ Page "Mission Statement" on the site of Supercentenarian Research Foundation
  57. ↑ Schneck, Andrea (2010-03-04). "Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine performs autopsy on 115-year-old woman to aid research". Daily Bruin.
  58. ↑ Leslie, Mitch (2008-09-26). "Searching for the Secrets of the Super Old". Science. 321 (5897): 1764–1765. doi:10.1126/science.321.5897.1764. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 18818335. S2CID 8441658.
  59. ↑ de Grey, Aubrey D. N. J.; Ames, Bruce N.; Andersen, Julie K.; Bartke, Andrzej; Campisi, Judith; Heward, Christopher B.; McCarter, Roger J. M.; Stock, Gregory (April 2002). "Time to talk SENS: critiquing the immutability of human aging". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 959 (1): 452–462, discussion 463–465. Bibcode:2002NYASA.959..452G. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2002.tb02115.x. ISSN 0077-8923. PMID 11976218. S2CID 1940908.
  60. ↑ "A Reimagined Research Strategy for Aging". SENS Research Foundation. 2012-11-18. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  61. ↑ Page "About Us" on the site of Methuselah Fund (Retrieved 2021-04-08)
  62. ↑ Rittmann, Bruce E.; Schloendorn, John (2007-08-20). "Engineering Away Lysosomal Junk: Medical Bioremediation". Rejuvenation Research. 10 (3): 359–366. doi:10.1089/rej.2007.0594. ISSN 1549-1684. PMID 17708688.
  63. ↑ "SENS Conferences". SENS Research Foundation. 2016-02-08. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  64. ↑ "The Methuselah 300". www.mfoundation.org. Archived from the original on 2018-03-03. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  65. ↑ "The Methuselah 300 Monument is Unveiled". Fight Aging!. 2015-11-24. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  66. ↑ Davidson, Keay (2006-09-18). "BAY AREA / Entrepreneur backs research on anti-aging / Scientist says humans could live indefinitely". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  67. ↑ "The Redemption of ZeeJustin". ESPN.com. 2007-02-22. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
  68. ↑ "Please Welcome the Newest Members of The Three Hundred". Methuselah Foundation Blog. Methuselah Foundation. 2007-01-18. Archived from the original on 2009-03-03. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
  69. ↑ "The Pineapple Fund Donates Millions to the Organ Preservation Alliance and Methuselah Foundation". Fight Aging!. 2018-01-29. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  70. ↑ Bitcoin Transaction 10dd3b4bb1…
  71. ↑ Bitcoin Transaction f0aa1cc5bc…
  72. ↑ "Ethereum Creator, Vitalik Buterin, Donates Over $1B to India COVID Relief". TheStreet. 12 May 2021. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
  73. ↑ etherscan.io. "Ethereum Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Etherscan". Ethereum (ETH) Blockchain Explorer. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
  74. ↑ "Vitalik Buterin Donates More than $2 Million to the Methuselah Foundation". Fight Aging!. 17 May 2021. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  75. ↑ etherscan.io. "Ethereum Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Etherscan". Ethereum (ETH) Blockchain Explorer. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
  76. ↑ etherscan.io. "Ethereum Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Etherscan". Ethereum (ETH) Blockchain Explorer. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
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