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A mini review on KLRI's annual fundraiser, Enlightened Age Forum. Lighting the Path to Healthy Aging, Frontdoors, December 2007

A preview of KLRI's annual fundraiser, Enlightened Age Forum. Kronos Forum Will Feature Carmona, Arizona Repubic, September 29, 2007

A Q&A format profile of KLRI. Plan a Long, Healthy Life, Frontdoors, April 2007

Similarly, many people could fund the answer to an important piece of scientific research if they so desired. Biotechnology is cheap nowadays, and only getting cheaper as time advances. The range of $5-20,000 will buy you a postgrad who knows what he's doing and lab access for long enough to answer an interesting question or produce a proof of principle - roughly the same as "is this worth chasing any further?" Can you use lasers to destroy lipofuscin inside cells, for example

The web of relationships, technology, and eager passage of information that enables a dynamic start-up culture is lacking for early stage research. A yawning gulf separates research communities from the many purses that might be opened were the connection made. People donate to research via intermediary organizations with broad goals because there is no readily available, widely understood way to do anything else.

The Institute opened its research facility in 1999. It was the first independent institution in the United States to respond to a call from the National Institute of Medicine to establish ten centers to study aging. The majority of the Institute’s funding now comes from federal grants, foundations, and donations.

Beryl Buck was trained as a nurse. Prior to her death in 1975, she asked that the Buck estate be used, in part, “to extend help toward the problems of the aged.”

До появления этой ФЦП «Исследования и разработки по приоритетным направлениям развития…» фактически построение исследовательских планов шло от потребностей научных организаций. А государственные чиновники либо соглашались, либо предлагали свои варианты работы. Из-за того, что ресурсов было мало, такая схема была вполне адекватна ситуации. Она, эта схема, работала не столько на развитие, сколько лишь на сохранение самой научной и технологической среды в стране.

за научную составляющую отвечает научное сообщество, а за соблюдение формальных требований и законов – чиновники и соответствующий аппарат

Госзаказчиком в этом процессе выступает Федеральное агентство по науке и инновациям (Роснаука)

2007 Task Force Report on Aging Research Funding

Download - Adobe Acrobat (PDF), 1.37 MB

The 2007 Task Force on Aging Research Funding--more than 85 non-partisan disease groups, patient advocates, and foundations--urges Congress and the President to chart a better course for medical research on behalf of America's aging population. This year's report of the Task Force calls for a 6.7% increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health in FY 2008. It also presents data on the burden of 27 diseases and conditions that predominately affect older Americans, highlights some of the exciting work the NIH is doing to decrease these burdens, and serves as a resource for policymakers working to establish the funding levels necessary to advance healthy aging.

Anti-aging research is scandalously under-funded.  In the US, a vast proportion of the funding doled out by the National Institute of Aging is given to research on Alzheimer's disease. According to one estimate (from circa 2004), only about 0.02% of the money spent by the National Institutes of Health (of which the NIA is part) is spent on fundamental aging research.

The more we understand about the biochemical processes involved in senescence the more we find that they look like disease processes. The accumulation of lysosomal aggregates and amyloid plaques, extracellular protein-protein cross-linking, nuclear and mitochondrial mutations, cell atrophy, cell senescence, and cell loss without replacement: these processes may all be implicated in both pathology and senescence.   At the level of genetics and biochemistry, there simply does not seem to be any meaningful distinction between "processes predisposing to or constituting disease" and "normal aging".

Aging is not an evolutionary adaptation. Aging, rather, is what happens when various bodily systems evolved to maintain health gradually accumulate defects and begin to malfunction. In the Pleistocene, when life-expectancy is estimated to have been a mere 20 years, too few of our ancestors survived to ripe old age for evolution to favor investment in stronger anti-aging defenses than those we now possess and are forced to rely upon, notwithstanding their evident inadequacy in the modern era where many causes of premature death have been removed.

There are two aspects to aging which most will recognize, the chronological passage of time which we associate with the benefits of increased experience and wisdom, and the increasing levels of dysfunction we experience as we get older.  One is welcome, the other less so.

It is estimated that 80% of our health care dollars go to the treatment of age-related dysfunction.  The Miliken Institute reported in Oct 2007 that in 2003 it cost 1.3 TRILLION DOLLARS per year in direct and indirect costs ameliorate the suffering of the aged. This is in stark contrast to the 150-200 Million Dollars actualy spent on studying aging which amounts to 1/6th of 1 percent of the yearly budget of the National Health Institute of 28 Billion dollars.

The reason for this disproportionate focus on spending on dysfunction instead of research is that aside from healthy lifestyle choices, little can presently be done to intervene in the aging process and people tend to disbelieve that serious progress will ever be made in addressing the dysfunction that accompanies the aging process.  Due to new breakthroughs this overly-pessimistic perspective is slowly changing.

1991 – In a major report “Extending Life, Enhancing Life, a National Research Agenda on Aging”, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) calls for the establishment of at least 10 Centers of Excellence to undertake the multi-disciplinary study of aging.

February 2006 - The Buck Institute launches the public phase of its first capital campaign to raise funds for a lab expansion project. Dr. Jan Vijg, internationally-renowned aging/cancer researcher joins the Institute as a faculty member.

September 2007 - The Institute is awarded a $25 million "Roadmap" award from  the NIH to establish a new field of research called "Geroscience", which will focus on the intersection of aging and chronic disease. It is one of only nine "Roadmap" awards granted in the country and is designed to address critical health issues that have not responded to traditional research

If development of metabolic manipulation therapies to slow aging continues to dominate, progress towards enhanced longevity will be much slower, and the resulting therapies will be of no use to those already aged.

From what I've seen, the Millards have money, influence, and the intelligence to use it well

The Millard Foundation has been moving towards earnest funding of longevity science over the past few years: there have been initial donations, conference attendances, meetings with movers and shakers. All the normal activities and preparation by people who take investing very seriously.

Похоже, что у частных управляющих компаний появился серьезный шанс поучаствовать в реализации Федеральных целевых программ. В Белом доме считают, что "по итогам обсуждения на президиуме может быть дано поручение профильным ведомствам рассмотреть целесообразность введения такого механизма". Причем Бюджетный кодекс этого не запрещает.

Финансирование подпрограммы развития футбола на 2008-2015 гг ФЦП развития физкультуры и спорта в РФ составит 19,127 млрд руб

Владимир Путин: «Не допускать включения в ФЦП явно бесперспективных и неактуальных так называемых научных исследований

Формирование ФЦП и оценка результатов их реализации должны стать более прозрачными и публичными. Это совершенно не тот случай, когда кулуарность и отсутствие учета мнения экспертов могут дать положительный результат.

ФЦП: за и против

Молекулярная и клеточная биология: Ак. Георгиев Г.П. 242,0

Фундаментальные науки - медицине Ак. Григорьев А.И. 81,0

О программах фундаментальных исследований РАН на 2008 год

LifeStar Project initiative of the Millard Foundation

Some international health care programs may be considered public-private partnerships:

In the United States, the most recent data from 2003[1] suggest that about 94 billion dollars were provided for biomedical research in the United States. The National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies collectively contribute 26.4 billion dollars and 27.0 billion dollars, respectively, which constitute 28% and 29% of the total, respectively. Other significant contributors include biotechnology companies (17.9 billion dollars, 19% of total), medical device companies (9.2 billion dollars, 10% of total), other federal sources, and state and local governments. Foundations and charities, led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, contributed about 3% of the funding.