Today's good news is that investor Jim Mellon has provided a sizable charitable donation to the SENS Research Foundation in support of their advocacy and rejuvenation research programs. The foundation is currently running their year end fundraiser, and this certainly helps to move the needle towards the goal: I hope that other high net worth individuals take note. The rest of us should also take note! The SENS Research Foundation has succeeded in the past, has helped to advance the field, change the public debate on aging, and move important research from academic lab to clinical development, all as a result of our material support. Collectively, we provided the fuel to power this engine. If we want to see more and better progress towards human rejuvenation in the years ahead, then we must continue to put our shoulders to the wheel and provide the resources needed. Nothing in this world happens without effort, and that effort requires funding.

Accordingly, Josh Triplett, Christophe and Dominique Cornuejols, and Fight Aging! are matching the next year of donations made by any new SENS Patrons who sign up to make a monthly donation to the SENS Research Foundation. Two thirds of our $54,000 matching fund remain to be claimed. Donate today!

The SENS Research Foundation staff and the researchers in laboratories supported by SENS Research Foundation grants are presently hard at work on a range of ways to repair the molecular damage that causes aging, focusing on important areas that are are languishing, both poorly funded and given too little attention by the broader research community. Until comparatively recently that category included work on senescent cells, but now the development of senolytic therapies to destroy those harmful, unwanted cells in order to produce rejuvenation is a rapidly growing, very exciting area of medical biotechnology.

There are many other portions of aging research that could just as readily bloom into sizable medical industries, and just as rapidly given the technology and the proof of concept studies. The goal of the SENS Research Foundation is to enable those starting conditions for each and every one of the known root causes of aging, the forms of cell and tissue damage that ultimately lead to disability, disease, and death. There is tremendous potential in aging research, but all too little of the field is given the resources it merits, when considering the scale of the benefits that can result from the advent of real, actual, working rejuvenation therapies.

That so much of the potential for rejuvenation biotechnology is poorly funded and ignored means that we must step up to do our part. It means that all of the earliest and most important medical research is funded by philanthropy: the radical new directions; the high risk / high reward chances; the promising work for which the tools are lacking. In all such cases the established and very conservative sources of funding shirk their duty. Only philanthropists with a vision for a better future are willing to step up to make the difference. Everything starts with philanthropy, with charitable donations made to those organizations like the SENS Research Foundation that have a proven track record of doing the right thing.

Don't stand on the sidelines. Step up and help us to build a future in which the suffering and death of aging can be prevented or turned back, in which the old are hale and healthy and productive.