The latest edition of the Rejuvenation Biotechnology Update arrived today. This newsletter series is a collaboration between the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Research Foundation, two of the most important organizations involved in advocacy and research to speed the defeat of aging and age-related disease. The newsletter goes out to members of the Methuselah 300, a long-standing group largely made up of ordinary philanthropists of modest means. Over the years these donors have collectively helped to fund many of the important projects carried out at the Methuselah Foundation: the Mprize for longevity science; the initial set of SENS rejuvenation research programs; seed funding tissue engineering startup Organovo and senescent cell clearance startup Oisin Biotechnologies; the establishment of the New Organ prize series; and much more.

If you want to see how everyday people with entirely ordinary incomes can band together to make a real difference to progress in the sciences, look no further than the Methuselah Foundation and the Methuselah 300. This is how it is done: persuade the core supporters, build a network of connections in the research community, and make smart, targeted investments in research and advocacy. On the back of this simple formula, and with the help of hundreds of supporters, the Methuselah Foundation has played a strong role in the significant, pivotal change that has taken place in the aging research community in the past fifteen years. Over the lifetime of the Methuselah Foundation the environment has gone from one in which talking about life extension through medical science was to risk your career to one in which the leaders of the field - and pretty much everyone else - openly advocate for greater human longevity. That didn't happened by chance, and it wasn't inevitable: it took a lot of hard work, both openly and behind the scenes, to bring about this important cultural change.

One of the great secrets of our time is that early stage medical research has become very cheap over the past few decades. The pace of progress in tools and knowledge is staggering. Any number of important, small, discrete projects at the cutting edge of the medical life sciences can be accomplished for a few tens of thousands of dollars, given an established lab to work with and smart young researchers to carry out the work. For a few hundred thousand dollars, a biotechnology company can be established, complete their prototype therapy, and carry out animal studies needed to attract greater investment. This is an age of communication, and research funding is in the process of becoming extremely transparent and collaborative: we can choose the projects to learn about and support, and we can see exactly what the organizations we trust to do this for us, such as the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Research Foundation, are doing with our donations. Every twist and turn of the race is there to be cheered on - and make no mistake, it is very much a race. Scientific progress and funding on the one hand, and aging on the other. We'll all win together in the best of worlds, in which rejuvenation therapies are developed soon enough, but lot of work remains in order to get to that goal. So consider joining the Methuselah 300 or donating to support SENS research programs. It is the smart thing to do.

Rejuvenation Biotechnology Update for April 2016 (PDF)