The Methuselah Foundation^[1] is a non-profit 501(c)(3) volunteer organization co-founded by Aubrey de Grey and David Gobel, which is based in Springfield, Virginia, United States.^[2] A major activity of the Methuselah Foundation is the Methuselah Mouse Prize, a prize designed to hasten the research into effective life extension interventions by awarding monetary prizes to researchers who stretch the lifespan of mice to unprecedented lengths.^[2] It's other interests include PR work for the acceptance of and interest in scientific anti-aging research and SENS-based research programs,^[2] all of which the foundation hopes will lead to a proposed Institute of Biomedical Gerontology.^[3][4]

Goals

The Foundation's long term goal is the defeat of human aging; its interim goal is a milestone that Aubrey de Grey has termed "Robust Mouse Rejuvenation" (RMR). RMR is defined as the ability to extend the healthy lives of middle-aged mice (which means two years old for a long-lived strain that lives three years on average) by two years. The Foundation's timeline for reaching that point is 8-10 years. It's shorter-term goals consist in accelerating the various research programs that go together to make the SENS plan, by attracting funds as rapidly as it can and sponsoring university research, prioritising those aspects of SENS that are not adequately funded by other means.^[2][4]

SENS Research program

Main article: Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS)

From his biogerontology work, de Grey believes there to be seven root causes of cellular aging, or as he puts it, "the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us,"^[5] all of which are reversible. They are cell loss and cell atrophy, nuclear [epi]mutations, mitochondrial mutations, death-resistant cells, extracellular crosslinks, extracellular junk, and intracellular junk.^[6]

The Foundation is currently funding two scientific research projects, LysoSENS^[7] and MitoSENS,^[8] each at the level of around $150,000 per year. The Foundation expects to initiate between two and four more projects during 2008 as well as expanding the existing two.^[9]

Methuselah Mouse Prize

The official Mprize logo

In 2003, de Grey co-founded (with David Gobel) the Methuselah Mouse Prize or Mprize, a prize designed to accelerate research into effective life extension interventions by awarding monetary prizes to researchers who extend the lifespan of mice to unprecedented lengths. Regarding this, De Grey stated in March 2005, "if we are to bring about real regenerative therapies that will benefit not just future generations, but those of us who are alive today, we must encourage scientists to work on the problem of aging." The foundation believes that if slowing or reversing of cellular aging can be exhibited in mice, an enormous amount of funding would be made available for such research in humans, which would accelerate progress, potentially including a massive government project similar to the Human Genome Project or by private for-profit companies.^[1][10]

The Methuselah Foundation awards prizes to researchers who extend the lifespan of a mouse to unprecedented lengths. The prize is named after Methuselah, a patriarch in the Bible said to have reached 969 years of age. Former Cambridge biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey is the chief scientist of the project, and also the co-founder alongside David Gobel. The Mprize has been covered in many news sources, including the BBC^[11][12] and Fortune magazine.^[13]

The prize reached $3 million USD in November 2005, after having reached $1.5 million USD in August 2005. The prize broke through the $4 million USD barrier on December 11, 2006.^[14]

Prize structure and current record holders

The foundation currently awards the following two prizes:

• A longevity prize for extending total lifespan
• A rejuvenation prize focusing on intervention begun at older age

The foundation collects donations in order to increase the size of the prizes. Whenever a record is broken, the researcher receives an amount based on the then current size of the prize fund and the percentage by which they exceeded the previous record.^[15]

The longevity prize allows any type of intervention, including breeding and genetic engineering; only a single mouse has to be presented. As of 2005, the record holder was a mouse whose growth hormone receptor had been genetically knocked out; it lived for 1819 days (almost 5 years).^[16] The Rejuvenation prize deals with peer-reviewed studies involving at least 40 animals, 20 treated and 20 control. Treatment may begin only at mid-life, and the average lifespan of the 10% longest living treated animals is used for the record. As of 2005, this record stood at 1356 days (about 3.7 years); the treatment was calorie restriction.^[16]

Until November 2004, the foundation ran a Reversal prize instead of the Rejuvenation prize, with the following rules: the treatment of the mouse could be started at any age, and days before treatment had started were counted double. The winner was a mouse that did not receive any dietary or pharmacological treatment at all, just an enriched environment. The mouse lived for 1551 days (about 4.2 years).^[17]

The mouse strain most often used for studies of lifespan, called C57BL/6, has a normal lifespan of about 3 years, while mice whose grandparents have been caught in the wild and are unharmed by inbreeding live nearly 4 years on average.^[16][18]

Methuselah Foundation Undergraduate Research Initiative

The Methuselah Foundation Undergraduate Research Initiative (MFURI) provides undergraduate college students in any academic discipline with the knowledge and logistical support to develop projects which contribute to the advocacy or support of the Methuselah Foundation or its mission of radically extending healthy human life. The MFURI provides students within the United States education system with the opportunity to receive college credits, scholarships, and recommendations for their efforts. Students from other countries are eligible to apply for many of the available scholarships. First proposed in April 2008, the MFURI project is administered by a team of volunteer supervisors and coordinators and receives scholarship funding from the Methuselah Foundation.^[19]

Staff

The staff of the Methuselah Foundation:^[20]

• Aubrey de Grey — Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Science Officer
• David Gobel — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
• Kevin Perrott — Chief Operating Officer
• Jeffrey Hall — Executive Director of SENS
• Roger Holzberg — Director of Marketing / Creative Director
• Susan Fonseca-Klein — Director of Development
• Michael Rae — Research Assistant
• Ben Zealley — Research Assistant

Donors and volunteers

On 16 September 2006, Peter A. Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of the online payments system PayPal, announced that he is pledging $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation "to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging." (SENS research).^[21] Justin Bonomo, professional poker player, has pledged 5% of his tournament winnings for SENS research.^[22] Kevin Dewalt has pledged $10 for every video response he gets to "Kevin's End Aging Challenge"^[23] on YouTube.^[24]

See also

• List of basic life extension topics

References