El Granada,
California.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to introduce you to the SENS Foundation. Our mission is simply stated: SENS Foundation will work to develop, promote and ensure widespread access to regenerative medicine solutions to the disabilities and diseases of aging. We shall be focusing on the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) identified by our Chief Science Officer, Dr Aubrey de Grey, and combining direct research efforts with education, affiliation and outreach programs.

Our work will incorporate and build upon the important research program initiated by Dr de Grey in his work for the Methuselah Foundation. We have agreed with the Methuselah Foundation that the time is ripe for transferring that work into a new entity, one designed to provide mature operational and financial management, and capable of developing the networks necessary to build on existing contributions. From day one, we shall be supporting key research through our own institute and through a variety of affiliated universities and research organizations.

The challenge is not small. We are proposing nothing less than a transformation of medicine; away from the increasingly burdensome and unprofitable chase to treat pathologies, and towards a functional – and, for society as a whole, more cost-effective – approach to maintaining and extending individual health.

Yet, we shall not be alone in our mission. Our own research will be governed by a strategic agenda to demonstrate the feasibility of SENS and regenerative medicine approaches, and therefore drive broader involvement. We are already assembling a world class team of advisors; we shall continue to build on the successful biennial Aging (US) and SENS (UK) Conferences; we are expanding affiliations to include non-profits with complementary missions, research organizations, government support, and technology transfer with mainstream biotechnology companies; and we shall be working hard to raise awareness and interest in the general community.

Over the coming months and years, I hope that you will seek to collaborate with us and support us in meeting the challenges which we have set for ourselves. Help us to make this audacious idea into a reality: Let’s stop aging.

Mike Kope