Results of round 1
We often wish that clinical trials happened faster, yet one of the most significant barriers to aging science is bureaucracy - long grant applications, infinite back-and-forth corrections, and more than a year of waiting time to get a decision. Worse of all, risky ideas almost never make it to the end of this pipeline. In the fall of 2021, we launched the first round of Impetus, our effort to fix funding for longevity. With applications being less than a page, we were able to make decisions on most of the projects in less than 3 weeks. Among the objectives of this round were the following:
1) Fund more research to develop and validate mechanistic biomarkers that measure aging in humans and animals
2) Fund more research to develop assays to measure causal and temporal relationships between different mechanisms of aging in cells and organs.
3) Fund projects that improve translation of research to clinics
Overall, we funded 98 projects. The first round of Impetus will lead to 4 clinical trials, 11 new tools to measure biology, 7 biomarkers, 25 large datasets on aging, and 10 therapeutic candidates. 19 of the studies will go on to challenge the current assumptions the field has about aging. 11 of the applications proposed new promising protocols for lifespan extension and 15 of funded projects will go on to test the existing therapies in a more rigorous way, to prove or disprove their contribution to healthspan. We also funded work on 2 new model organisms, so we are hopeful that future studies will soon benefit from better models. While we mostly focused on research, there were also a few projects that would otherwise boost progress in the field of aging research, including the first-ever conferences on Systems Biology of Aging (the aging field currently lacks the ‘systems’ perspective) and Reproductive Aging, an initiative to extend the WHO classification of aging as a driver of disease, and a database compiling past lifespan experiments for better comparability. We also supported many ideas that are likely to fail and, by failing, would give us more knowledge than successful but incremental research ever could.
One of our stated directions is to support bold research that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. We estimate that ~27% of these would not have received funding through traditional sources, either because the idea didn’t have any literature traction or had a high upside risk in implementation. Our overall acceptance rate was 15% (the average acceptance rate of NIH grants is ~20%). We are proud that the acceptance rate for students and PhDs was 26%, post-docs - 16%, and outsiders to academia - 9.6%, all of which aren’t eligible for NIH grants. No one should wait to get to higher “academic ranks” to test their ideas.
We will continue to monitor the status of projects funded through this round. We will also work to prepare a special Geroscience issue where we can publish both positive and zero results from this round.
The list of funded researchers:
Adriana M. Padilla-RogerAlaattin KayaAlan A. CohenAlibek MoldakozhayevAndrew Chris YangBarry BentleyBenjamin MillerBranden R. NelsonBrian M. WaskoCherfils-Vicini JulienChih-Hao ChangChristian Riedel & Peter StenvinkelChristopher BurtnerChristopher FaulkChristopher HineChuankai (Kai) ZhouCorina AmorCraig GlastonburyCristina Mayor-RuizDaniel Bryan GoodmanDaniel PromislowDaniel RichardDavid VilchezDavis EnglundDella DavidDouglas E VaughanDudley LammingEliisa KekäläinenEmily GoldbergFederico PietrocolaGeoffrey Richard TannerGeorges E. JanssensHelen BlauHenrik AhleniusHongjie LiIustin TabareanJavier Gómez OrtegaJohn NewmanJonathan AnJonathan WeissmanJose Alberto Lopez-DominguezJuliana Sucharov CostaJunyue CaoKapil V. RamachandranKonstantinos ChronisKorbyn J.V. DahlquistLeif S. LudwigLev Y YampolskyMaitreya DunhamMallar BhattacharyaMarco DemariaMarianna SadagurskiMark McCormickMatt KaeberleinMatthew PiperNathan BasistyNicholas GentryOlga SpiridonovaOmar AbudayyehPatrick GriffinPaul WoltersPeter MullenPetter HollandPontus Plavén-SigrayPrashant MaliPuneet BatraRachel McQuadeRaghav SehgalRaul AndinoRhys AndersonRozalyn AndersonSaad KhanSamuel Gordon RodriquesSarah MitchellSebastian HoferShahaf PelegShai Shen-OrrSinisa HrvatinSirui ZhangSophia LiuStephan EmmrichSurojit SarkarVandana KaliaTimothy MackieVadim GladyshevValentin CracanWillard M FreemanXiaojing GaoXin JinXuebing WuYizhou ZhuZev WilliamsZhixun Dou