SENS Foundation

The SENS Foundation is a non-profit organization co-founded by Michael Kope, Aubrey de Grey, Jeff Hall, Sarah Marr and Kevin Perrott, which is based in California, United States. Its activities include SENS-based research programs and public relations work for the acceptance of and interest in scientific rejuvenation research. Before the Foundation was launched in March 2009, the SENS research program was mainly pursued by the Methuselah Foundation, co-founded by Aubrey de Grey and David Gobel.

Goals

The Foundation's long term goal is the defeat of human aging; its interim goal is a milestone that Aubrey de Grey has termed "Robust Mouse Rejuvenation" (RMR). RMR is defined as the ability to extend the healthy lives of middle-aged mice (which means two years old for a long-lived strain that lives three years on average) by two years. Its shorter-term goal is to accelerate the various research programs that go together to make the SENS plan, by attracting funds as rapidly as it can and sponsoring university research, prioritising those aspects of SENS that are not adequately funded by other means.

SENS Research

Main article: Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS)

From his biogerontology work, de Grey believes there to be seven categories of cellular damage that constitute agedness, or as he puts it, "the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us," all of which are reversible. In order to repair each type of aging damage, de Grey has also developed seven intervention strategies.

Seven types of aging damage and SENS solutions:

1. Cell loss and cell atrophy — Stem cells and tissue engineering ("RepleniSENS")
2. Nuclear [epi]mutations — WILT, short for "Whole-body Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres" ("OncoSENS")
3. Mitochondrial mutations — Allotopic expression of 13 proteins ("MitoSENS")
4. Death-resistant cells — Targeted removal ("ApoptoSENS")
5. Extracellular crosslinks — AGE-breaking molecules and tissue engineering ("GlycoSENS")
6. Extracellular aggregates — Stimulating of the immune system to clear out the aggregates ("AmyloSENS")
7. Intracellular aggregates — Equipping the lysosome with enzymes capable of degrading the aggregates ("LysoSENS")

The Foundation is currently funding projects in LysoSENS, MitoSENS, and OncoSENS.

As of March 2009, over $6 million in donations have been pledged for SENS research.

Staff

The staff of the SENS Foundation:

• Michael Kope, Co-Founder : Chief Executive Officer
• Aubrey de Grey, Co-Founder : Chief Science Officer
• Jeff Hall, Co-Founder : VP Research Operations
• Sarah Marr, Co-Founder : VP Development and Communications

Interim Board:

• Barbara J. Logan : Chair
• Kevin Dewalt : Board Member
• Kevin Perrott, Co-Founder : Board Member

Donors and volunteers

On September 16, 2006, Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of the online payments system PayPal, announced that he is pledging $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation "to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging" (SENS research). Justin Bonomo, professional poker player, has pledged 5% of his tournament winnings for SENS research. Sam Harris, a prominent nonfiction writer and scientific skeptic, is a Methuselah Mouse Prize 300 member.

See also

• Methuselah Foundation
• Outline of life extension