@impetusgrants
applications are now open (1-31st of August)
If you are a scientist but you never worked on aging.
If you are a Ph.D. student with good ideas.
If you are a postdoc deciding on the direction of your future lab.
Come join the good pursuit. We
Round 2 of Impetus Grants is happening in May! Same blinded reviews, same fast responses, same short applications - now with new topics and bounty funding format:
We are happy to finally publicly announce our results from round 2 and our new exciting collaboration with the Hevolution Foundation. Read more about projects on our website ($4M in funding!):
Congratulations to
@RonghaoZhou
@jengreitz
@Thomas_Rando
who will be conducting large-scale CRISPR perturbation screens in vivo, in naturally aged mice, to identify genes that can reverse molecular signatures of aging.
Next funded project: lab of Vera Gorbunova at
@UofR
will explore mechanisms responsible for longevity of the longest-lived mammal, the bowhead whale & search for strategies to activate these mechanisms in vivo in mice and in human cells.
They are hiring a postdocs for this work!
How do we get the next generation of the most brilliant scientists to work on aging? Science follows the incentives (= funding)
@LNuzhna
/ Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Many studies have described benefits of partial reprogramming but little is known about its potential genetic consequences.
@martakova
will use novel lineage tracing strategies to probe the contribution of partially reprogrammed cells in vivo. They are hiring a postdoc!
4 more days to apply for the current round of funding
- Applications are short enough that you can write them in a day!
- Any level of scientific training and background
"Cells are more than their constituent molecules, owing to the emergent behaviors arising from molecular complexity. We will address how these emergent properties of cells are disturbed during ageing and whether we can harness them for rejuvenation" -
@Sciezgin
&
@FedericoPietr12
Currently, there are no therapies capable of durable hematopoietic stem cells rejuvenation in vivo.
@JD_Buenrostro
@patrick_griffN
are developing a new strategy in HSCs to improve potency of novel transcription factors and associated rejuvenation!
A 50-PAGER AND A 2-PAGER CONTAIN THE SAME AMOUNT OF ESSENTIAL INFORMATION BUT BOTH REVIEWERS AND RESEARCHERS HATE LONG PROPOSALS SO ACTUALLY ALL GRANTS SHOULD BE 2-PAGE LONG
Can a worm with a typical 15-day lifespan survive for a year? By combining multiple interventions, each known to extend lifespan individually, how much can we prolong life? Excited for
@JavierApfeld
to find out the plasticity of C.elegans lifespan.
Why are there so little opportunities for
#postdocs
to apply for ‘smaller’ experimental
#grants
? I would like to have more going on for myself (with me as applicant) and not ask my PI to hand them in (and apply for a PhD student). Annoying.
Can we shield the epigenome from age-related changes, much like how SIRT6 defends the genome? Using a CRISPRi screening approach,
@XiaoTianPhD
seeks to identify genes involved in maintaining epigenome stability. His new lab
@sbpdiscovery
is recruiting for various roles!
Up next!
@jgooten
&
@omarabudayyeh
will be using the tools developed in their lab to target specific cell states in partial reprogramming & answer all the hard questions the field has been avoiding around reprogramming and associated rejuvenation. Congrats!
First round 3 project from
@berkeleyMCB
Gametogenesis resets lifespan and gametogenesis-specific rejuvenation (GSR) factors can be expressed to extend lifespan in model organisms.
@tinalynnsing
is identifying new GSR factors that can be used to combat age-related damage. Congrats!
Progress on understanding female reproductive aging has been impeded by significant lack of animal models that share reproductive features with humans. Dr Kochersberger from
@BuckInstitute
plans to assess Pallas’s long-tongued bat as a model for mammalian menopause!
Human clinical use of current senescence biomarkers is limited by invasiveness.
@saralahue
@GeriSciDoc
are creating a blood-based biomarker for quantifying senescence in adipose tissue, testing its performance against senescent cell burden and existing SASP profiles!
If you are in Cambridge / Boston, come join our launch party and lightning talks on aging from
@kpfortney
@AlexJColville
@KKajderowicz
at the end of the week!
Sunday, July 30, 18:00 at Arts at the Armory
One of the things we funded through the first round was the upcoming Systems Aging Conference . Why conference and not research? One might find it surprising but there was a great consensus among our reviewers that it should happen...
Another big rapamycin news today: the study we funded to test whether we can slow ovarian aging using rapamycin (VIBRANT) is now recruiting women 35-42. Check whether you qualify to join:
(ht to incredible Zev Williams and Yousin Suh making it possible!)
From the moment of conception, our germline cells have already aged for two or three decades, implying that the embryo must undergo initial rejuvenation.
@BarcenaClea
(
@uniovi_info
) is investigating embryonic rejuvenation to develop strategies for lifespan extension!
Giant tortoises live 100+ years with few signs of aging and offer a unique chance to study anti-aging adaptations.
@heatherfsmith
,
@spotdvm
aim to identify anti-aging adaptations of long-lived tortoises that support their resistance to senescence.
@ScarletImaging
@MidwesternUniv
Small nucleoli are observed in long-lived mutants of C. elegans, rapamycin-treated flies, calorie-restricted flies, mice, and humans...
@AntebiLab
&
@F_Melerowicz
will test whether their morphology is a suitable predictor to discover lifespan-extending drugs!
Cells in the heart have evolved a special ribosome to enhance proteostasis and survive heightened proteotoxic stress. Can we reactivate it in brain and other tissues to impact lifespan?
@wu_xuebing
is finding out! Congrats
Previously, we funded a risky idea - light-controllable rejuvenation of mitochondrial membrane potential that showed lifespan extension in worms.
@DocLarus
@musabumair98
are now translating this work into mammals
We will also hold a pre-launch event near San Francisco the night before applications go live. Come join us for food, drinks, and lightning talks about aging!
Hibernators live longer than closely related non-hibernators, yet the mechanisms underlying this effect remain unknown.
@hrvatin_sinisa
lab aims to characterize the effects of hibernation on hamster lifespan and markers of aging! 🐹
We just made it easier to support the program!If you are interested in making a contribution, however large or small, check this out:
We aim to have the largest impact on aging per $ spent, so, for transparency, we are also publishing our fin.statements
Decline in proteostasis and lysosomal function during aging leads to improper protein degradation and accumulation of toxic proteins.
@TheVilchezLab
@MarkusWehrmann_
are using directed evolution to engineer protein variants that can effectively reduce aggregates during aging.
Dunham lab
@dunhamlab
is exploring tolerance to long term freezing as a possible new paradigm for yeast aging. Using experimental evolution, they are generating strains with exceptional cryoresistance, to sequence their genomes and discover how they've accomplished this feat.
We continue to support studies that uncouple epigenetic age from cell differentiation status and gestational age. Check out the new preprint from a collaboration between
@gladyshev_lab
& Horvath & Peshkin labs, led by Bohan Zhang &
@Andrei_Tarkhov
and funded through Impetus ⬇️
There are many ways to measure DNA damage, yet no responsive biomarkers!
@vakil_takhaveev
@ProfessorShana
@Toxicology_ETH
@ETH_en
are using novel DNA-damage-sequencing methods in mouse models to discover mechanistic biomarkers implicated in aging. They are hiring a PhD student!
Proteins tend to misfold and aggregate in aging. While there are known cellular mechanisms driving protein turnover,
@fried_lab
& Savas lab identified their potential vulnerability. They propose a study to test what happens to structures of proteins in aging brain at scale!
Leveraging Geneformer, a foundational deep learning model for biology,
@TheodorisLab
,
@m_alexanian
will determine targets that reverse age-related fibrosis. They will then validate the efficacy of these targets in in vivo to establish new avenues for anti-fibrotic therapies!
I’m pleased to announce the official launch of the UW Rapamycin Study funded by the Impetus Grants program. Website is live and the we are actively recruiting participants:
Please RT!
@Blagosklonny
@MartinBJensen
@RapaNews
/1
The thymus starts to shrink after puberty, continuing and worsening throughout life.
@BiotechByron
will investigate adenoviral encoded endogenous analytes to restore thymic function in models of aging, thereby restoring immune functionality.
>>
@SynBioGaoLab
&
@RogelioHdezL
are combining state-of-the-art synbio tools with cell therapies to target specific subsets of cells implicated in inflammaging. This approach could both probe cell's causal roles and eventually be developed into senolytics. Congrats!
Team of
@a1eksei_m
@PaolaAmato
@Db4qL3qnJDhKtY5
aim to elucidate the epigenetic mechanisms in the oocyte cytoplasm that govern natural, sequential reprogramming of aged somatic cells to the embryonic state. Apply to join their project as post-doc:
Recent reports highlighted a woman with Alzheimer's-linked gene variant, who avoided cognitive impairment for three decades due to protective mutations.
@RyanDhindsa
will study the genetics of those outliving expectations despite underlying aging risk factors!
Next work we funded is by
@GMorabito96
at
@Unipisa
: "I always considered evolution the greatest experimental biologist to ever exist. For aging, it has already figured out robust proteins for longer survival in some species. Can we use them to slow down aging in humans?"
Another Impetus-funded rapamycin trial to receive IND approval from FDA! Congratulations to Dr Jonathan An & team . You can sign up and potentially participate in the RAPID trial yourself:
From SASP to GDF11 and TIMP2,circulating plasma proteins play big role in both aging and rejuvenation. However, we don't yet have ways to profile targets of these factors and how they get altered in aging.
@JoshTycko
@MEGNeuro
are developing tools to profile these changes in vivo
To overcome shortage of healthy brain donors,
@Jinte
@Eriknutma
(
@BPRC_eu
) will establish a biobank of brain samples and fluids from aging non-human primates. They will also create a multimodal brain atlas of aging macaques and identify age-related alterations in plasma and CSF!
Congratulations to
@SDMeriney
(
@NeuroatPitt
@PittNeurosci
) pioneering development and use of a novel small molecule candidate for controlling synaptic plasticity and chemical transmitter release in aging!
Macrophages exhibit impaired cell clearance with age, yet it is not known how this happens, or whether it can be therapeutically reversed.
@RoarkeKamber
from
@UCSF
will investigate the mechanisms of decreased macrophage function using systematic in vivo CRISPR-based screening.
the fact that the majority of scientists would change their research focus if they didn't have to apply for grants is the single most concerning reality of the current scientific funding system
Molecules, cells and organs are embedded within networks whose components depend on each other to function. To understand mechanistic interactions within these networks,
@nstroustrup1
is developing methods for analysis that can be applied to both model organism and clinical data.
Hevolution to provide up to $25 Million in total grants in the remainder of 2023 and up to $115 Million, total, over five years for pre-clinical aging biology and geroscience research.
Today (midnight PST) is the last day to submit your application for the second round. We got enough submissions for most directions but will keep the call open for the "Compiling Open Problems" bounty for another week.
While Schmidtea mediterranea is a well-established model for regeneration, its lifespan remains ambiguously documented, with many contradicting numbers. Team of
@the_technocrat
@openzyme
@splat_space
will build & distribute a monitoring device to reproducibly measure its lifespan
1/ 📢 Personal announcement!
Excited to announce The Longevity Biotech Fellowship: a non-profit to help people maximize their impact in longevity
Want to get oriented, connected, and working on aging? LBF kicks off our first cohort in Jan 2023.
👉
🧵
📢NEW Call-for-Papers 📢- Impetus Grants
The call is providing a platform for the dissemination of results from Impetus funded projects.
Submissions open from June 2022 till September 2024.
@LNuzhna
@mkaeberlein
@MartinBJensen
GRC Systems Aging is one of the first efforts to unite disconnected research directions. And it is at the core of the Impetus philosophy too - many new insights can happen at the intersections of mechanistic studies.
Join
@FounderLedBio
chat tomorrow (November 4, 3-4 pm ET) with
@LNuzhna
on how Impetus developed & where it is headed, as well as a discussion of new organizational models from
@AGamick
and
@aloktayi
To register:
For a while, the geroscience field has been fragmented into studies of mechanisms. While critical, there was little effort done on the side of integrating those mechanisms together, to create a bigger, "systems", picture of what aging is.
@cz_binance
We have been funding risky aging science across the globe since 2021, with almost no overhead & $34m allocated. Many of the projects are already published in top journals after being rejected by other funding institutions
Tune in for the live announcement of The Longevity Prize with
@vita_dao
, and the
@mfoundation
at 9 am PT on our Youtube channel to discover upcoming Longevity Prizes and meet the judges: .
More about the Prize: .
We are excited to share Geneformer, our foundation model pretrained on 30 million single cell transcriptomes to enable predictions in network biology.
Manuscript:
Model:
Pretraining corpus:
Join our free virtual 1-week crash course on tactics for building startups in biotech. Application is <1 min! Open to all.
We've had hundreds of people join us, and many have launched or joined really exciting companies.
👉
On Mar 3rd & 4th at 8am PT,
@juanbenet
,
@AdamMarblestone
,
@notscottmoore
,
@mala
, & other thought leaders will discuss novel experiments & future directions for funding these collective commons at the 2-day, virtual event, Funding the Commons.
Sign up 👉
First round 3 project from
@berkeleyMCB
Gametogenesis resets lifespan and gametogenesis-specific rejuvenation (GSR) factors can be expressed to extend lifespan in model organisms.
@tinalynnsing
is identifying new GSR factors that can be used to combat age-related damage. Congrats!
Our ADAR-based RNA sensors just came online! It allows you to express protein payloads in live cells in direct response to the presence of specific RNA transcripts. Also
@EerikKaseniit
, welcome to twitter.