Hevolution Foundation to Tackle Aging Research’s Funding Problem Head-on in New Grant Program

Hevolution Foundation, the behemoth non-profit with an annual $1 billion budget, this week released a new grant program to fund aging-related research that has been overlooked.

The pilot program – Hevolution Foundation – Advancing Geroscience Efforts (HF-AGE) – plans to fund ten longevity projects with up to $5 million in 2022. 

The goal of HF-AGE is to “fund research that was deemed meritorious and praiseworthy in peer review by the National Institute on Aging (NIA)… but ultimately not funded by them.”

In short, HF-AGE believes that multiple projects that are well-reviewed by the NIA are not funded due to budgetary limitations. HF-AGE aims to solve this by focusing specifically on those projects that are positively peer-reviewed and specifically aging-related.

As noted by Hevolution Foundation’s Chief Scientific Officer, Filipe Sierra:

“During my previous tenure with the NIA, I was struck by the number of high-quality grant proposals received and reviewed but ultimately turned down, oftentimes simply because of budgetary limitations.”

As we have previously noted at Spannr, the National Institute of Health’s (NIH), and more specifically the NIA’s, budget has continued to grow year over year going from less than $2 billion in 2016 to nearly $4 billion in 2021.

Yet, the amount of money allocated specifically to aging-related disease is relatively small with only 8.4% of the NIA’s budget allocated to “aging biology.” This equates to ~0.54% of the total NIH budget of $43 billion.

This is because although the NIA has a large funding allocation ($3-4 billion annually) from the NIH, most of this money is used to fund Alzheimer’s research as opposed to root-cause aging research.

HF-AGE aims to help close this gap by directly funding this area of research. As noted by HF-AGE’s submission guidelines:

“Successful submissions will focus on understanding how the basic mechanisms of aging improve health, rather than on specific diseases affecting the elderly. Projects investigating age-related diseases or functional disorders will be considered only if approached from the point of view of how basic aging processes may lead to disease outcomes or how addressing the basic biology of aging might improve prognosis or treatment. Projects that deal strictly with clinical problems such as the diagnosis or treatment of disease, health outcomes, or the social context of aging are not eligible.”

This is an amazing development for the field of longevity, as now individuals that are specifically studying aging-related disease have an avenue to receive funding without having to water down or broaden their research focus.

And because HF-AGE is focused solely on projects that were positively reviewed by the NIA, the non-profit will be able to move swiftly in choosing which research to fund with Dr. Sierra stating:

“We anticipate being able to [fund research] quickly, given that the eligible projects will have already been thoroughly vetted by the NIH review process.”

Despite calling the new venture a pilot program, HF-AGE appears to be moving quickly by asking for applications to be submitted by November 22nd. Hevolution, however, aims for HF-AGE to be an annual project, as any signs of success would likely result in even more funding in coming years.