As has become the custom, the SENS Research Foundation will be running a year-end fundraiser in the last few months of 2017, the proceeds going to support work on the foundations of real, working rejuvenation therapies. We of the Fight Aging! community will do our part to help make it a success. Expect it to start up at the end of October or the first week of November. Last year Josh Triplett, Christophe and Dominique Cornuejols, and Fight Aging! joined forces to put up $36,000 challenge fund that matched the first year of donations made by anyone who signed up as a SENS Patron by setting up recurring monthly donations to the SENS Research Foundation. We all think it important to help build up the core of supporters who supply the regular donations that help to fund SENS research projects: the more regular donors, the less uncertain the flow of funding, something that is always a challenge for non-profit organizations. On this topic, you might recall that the initial success of the Methuselah Foundation, launched nearly fifteen years ago now, was built atop the funds and support provided by the Methuselah 300, a group of monthly donors.
For the SENS Patron challenge, we hit 85% of our target in 2016, encouraged the participation of numerous new monthly donors, and I'm pleased to say we'll be back again for another try this year, with another $36,000 pledged to challenge the community. But why stop at $36,000? If you want to make a difference to the future of human health and longevity, and want your contributions to make a sizable impact, then why not help our community fundraiser by joining in to expand the SENS Patron challenge fund? The SENS year end fundraisers have a great record when it comes to the use of challenge funds to attract new donations. Further, the SENS rejuvenation research programs that our donations have supported over the past decade or more, first at the Methuselah Foundation, and then at the SENS Research Foundation, have a proven track record of enabling active clinical development of therapies, such as in areas relating to mitochondrial damage, senescent cells, and clearance of cellular waste. More of that sort of thing will be rolling out later this year and early next year, so keep an eye out for new announcements on that front.
While very welcome, this concrete progress enabled by our support does only cover the first set of tasks, the first set of research areas and potential therapies to be unblocked and to reach fruition. There is more yet to be done, and philanthropy is still needed to accomplish these goals - to rescue and expand areas of research that are still languishing, but that have the potential to be just as exciting and influential in the treatment of aging as, say, the clearance of senescent cells has become in recent years. Six years ago senescent cells were a disregarded backwater for everyone except SENS advocates and a few determined research teams who struggled to find funding. Change can be rapid when it finally takes off, and our support for the SENS Research Foundation is a very important, necessary foundation for that change. There are few other areas of philanthropy where one can help to generate such enormous, important changes in the capacity of medical science. The defeat of aging lies somewhere ahead, a improvement in the human condition more profound than any other yet achieved through medicine. We are helping to make it happen.
So give it some thought: there is a warm welcome waiting for any new challenge fund donors willing to step up and grow this year's SENS Patron fundraiser - please contact us with questions or offers of support.
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