Newswise — RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — June 10, 2024 — Hevolution Foundation, a global nonprofit organization that provides grants and early-stage investments to incentivize research and entrepreneurship in healthspan science, has committed over $400 million to healthspan sciences within the past 21 months, positioning the Foundation as the world's largest philanthropic funder of geroscience.
While the global average lifespan is about 72 years[i], there is an increasing gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, and many are living the final years of their lives in poor health (8.3 years for men, 11 years for women)[ii]. Hevolution Foundation is working to address the underlying causes of aging, to help prevent the onset of age-related diseases. Through healthspan grants and investments, Hevolution Foundation is nurturing new research and breakthroughs in the rapidly progressing field of geroscience.
Recent research awards to leading medical institutions include a $20.2 million grant to Albert Einstein College of Medicine focused on senescence and aging. The project is led by Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, a distinguished leader in the aging field and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Hevolution also awarded $32.3 million to Northwestern University, for research led by Dr. Richard Morimoto, focused on defining healthy proteostasis and maintaining proteostasis in a robust, resilient state. Both of these are long-term grants, spread over five years.
“We’re spending a decade of life in poor health— this is a decade too many. Our current healthcare system focuses more on intervention, but our goal is to address the underlying causes of aging and age-related diseases.” shares Dr. Mehmood Khan, Chief Executive Officer at Hevolution Foundation. “Geroscience and healthspan science are critically underfunded, which is why Hevolution is stepping up to bridge this gap. We're proud to be the world's largest philanthropic funder in geroscience.”
“This is one of the most exciting times in the research on the biology of aging, due to the multiple experimental proofs that show we can modulate the way organisms age. However, we all fear that the scarcity of funding may hinder progress,” said Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, Co-Director at Einstein Institute for Aging Research. “Timely support through the many programs of the Hevolution Foundation will be key to recruiting and retaining new talent in this field, maintaining momentum, and accelerating the discovery and implementation of gerotherapeutic interventions to ensure healthy aging.”
“We are thrilled that the Proteostasis Consortium is partnering with the Hevolution Foundation to address this fundamental question on the biology of aging,” said Dr. Richard I. Morimoto, Bill and Gayle Cook Professor of Biology at Northwestern University. “Our team, including researchers at Northwestern, the University of California San Francisco, the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, Stanford, Scripps Research, Harvard Medical School and the Health Research Institute of Asturias (ISPA), is working to provide new insights on the molecular biology of healthy aging and develop approaches to rejuvenate cellular and organismal health."
In addition, Hevolution will continue to launch grant programs supporting individual aging researchers, including the Hevolution Foundation Geroscience Research Opportunities (HF-GRO), Hevolution Foundation Postdoctoral Training in Geroscience (HF-PTG), and Hevolution Foundation Geroscience in Latin America (HF-GLA). HF-PTG has a total investment of $5M over four years and is a pilot program aimed to identify accomplished PhD and MD/PhD students interested in pursuing postdoctoral training in biology of aging and/or geroscience, with the goal of ultimately growing and diversifying the number of researchers in the aging space. HF-GRO is an international effort to accelerate progress in healthy aging research that will provide up to $25M in new grants in 2024 to fund projects in Aging Biology or Geroscience. HF-GLA is a pilot initiative that will launch in early July, providing up to $5M over four years for projects in Aging Biology or Geroscience to independent investigators with laboratories conducting biomedical research in Latin America.
“These grants are a significant milestone for Hevolution Foundation,” says Dr. Felipe Sierra, Chief Scientific Officer at Hevolution Foundation. “Hevolution’s investments in basic aging research and geroscience advance our mission to extend healthy human lifespan, by promoting the generation of further knowledge into these growing disciplines. By funding the work of both young and seasoned researchers, we will deepen our collective understanding of the aging process and its role in retaining health into old age."
To stay up to date with upcoming Hevolution investment and grant announcements that advance the future of healthy aging, click here.
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About Hevolution Foundation
Launched in 2021, Hevolution Foundation is a first-of-its-kind global non-profit organization that provides grants and early-stage investments to incentivize independent research and entrepreneurship in the emerging field of healthspan science. With a focus on aging as a treatable process, Hevolution aims to increase the number of aging-related treatments on the market, compress the timeline of drug development, and increase accessibility to therapeutics that extend healthy lifespan. Hevolution is headquartered in Riyadh with a North American hub in Boston, with plans to expand to other global locations, supporting a cutting-edge, global ecosystem of talent to propel aging and geroscience research forward and achieve medical breakthroughs to help humanity live healthier, longer. Over the last 21 months, Hevolution has committed over $400M in funding.
[i] World population prospects 2022. New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs; 2022 (https://population.un.org/wpp/ Download/Standard/MostUsed/).
[ii] The WHO baseline report for the Decade of Healthy Ageing. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020 (https://www.who.int/publications/i/ item/9789240017900).
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