Congratulations are due to researcher John Schloendorn and the Methuselah Foundation team:

The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University has awarded biochemist John Schloendorn a $30,000 scholarship that will enable him to pursue anti-aging research as a Ph.D. student in the School of Life Sciences. Schloendorn is part of the institute's inaugural doctoral graduate assistantship class of 2006.

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Schloendorn's research has been and is supported by a seed grant made by the Methuselah Foundation, a charity dedicated to accelerating the process of discovering methods to defeat the debilities caused by aging.

This is an excellent example of the way in which the combination of funding and success leads to more funding and greater success. Schloendorn has made worthy first steps in the search for bacterial enzymes that can safely degrade intracellular aggregates and thus remove their contribution to degenerative aging - and there will be more to come.

Schloendorn's work has led to the isolation and characterization of bacteria that efficiently degrade several recalcitrant cholesterol breakdown products, among them 7-ketocholesterol, that are thought to play a major role in atherosclerosis (the cause of almost all heart attacks and strokes). His future objective is to isolate the enzymes responsible for the breakdown and test their therapeutic prospects in cell models of the disease, with the ultimate goal of creating medical bioremediation treatments for humans.

In this way, by intelligently backing the right researchers and research programs, the Methuselah Foundation can multiply the impact of donations for SENS research funding by attracting outside resources to projects that are proving themselves successful. It's five figures this year, but it'll be more next, and yet more the year following. Momentum breeds more momentum.

Technorati tags: biotechnology, medical research, SENS