review: LongeCity Crowdfunded Research Projects

Jul 18 2016 02:05 AM | caliban in LongeCity

Longecity’s approach to supporting scientific research has always been characterized by small-scale, high-impact projects sourced and steered by and in connection with its community. Years before ‘crowdfunding’ and ‘citizen science’ became well known concepts they were practiced at LongeCity.

Some examples of SCIENCE projects we have crowdsourced in the past:

	“Laser ablation of lipofuscin” [2009] Lead: N.Schooler (SENS/private). An attempt to use medical lasers to eliminate Alzheimer plaques, this was an early venture in Longecity crowdfunding. While results were not of satisfactory robustness, this project paved the way towards LongeCity taking a planned approach to quality control in community crowdfunding science. [More info]
“Mitochondrial uncoupling” [2010] Lead: Dr. J.Gruber (Singapore). Modulation of the incomplete coupling of electron transfer to ATP synthesis across the mitochondrial membrane has been proposed as a mechanism to slow aging. The project investigated this hypothesis in worms. [Follow-up interview]
	“Adult stem cells versus Alzheimer's” [2011] Lead: Dr. A.Stolzing (Germany). Aiming to use adult stem cells in the fight against age-related neurodegeneration such as Alzheimer's disease. Perhaps the most ambitious LongeCity funded project to date. [Publication]
“Modelling cryoprotectant toxicity” [2012] Lead: Dr. JP de Magalhães (UK). The innate toxicity of compounds used to protect against freezing damage limits their use for advancing the science of medical biostasis. Longecity crowdfunding helped generate new insights from gene expression profiling of endothelial cells exposed to ethylene glycol, thus helping to reveal molecular signatures helpful for future experiments on cryoprotectant toxicity [Publication]
	“Mitochondria gene therapy” [2013] Lead: Dr. M.O’Connor (SENS). Another perspective at the crucial role of mitochondria in aging, this project supported research into rejuvenating these ‘power plants’ of the cell. $21K was mobilized and lead directly to a much larger follow-up project
“Buckyballs & cancer” [2014] Lead: Dr. K.Moody (Ichor), the Longecity community got very intrigued about a research paper reporting to extend mouse lifespan with nanosize C60 ‘buckyballs’. Via crowdsourcing we promoted further independent investigation into C60 effects which, as a side effect also prompted some interesting vendor testing data.
	Co -Funding In recent years, LongeCity has strategically offered co-funding to maximize the impact of fundraisers at LIFESPAN.IO Among the projects supported were: CellAge [2017]; AgeMeter [2017]; MitoMouse [2019]
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	In addition to these specific research projects, LongeCity has ⇒ supported students via small grants, ⇒ established a research partnership and support strategy and ⇒ taken the same crowdsourcing approach to other community initiatives.