MPrize helped mice live longer. Now it’s humans’ turn

Someone recently asked about the Methuselah Mouse Prize, one of the Methuselah Foundation’s first major initiatives.

The 2003 MPrize was important because it was the first competition to stimulate advancements in life extension therapies. We awarded four financial prizes for life-extending achievements, each recognizing a different approach to the challenge.

Andrzej Bartke won for developing a therapy combining insulin, glucose and genetically modified growth hormone, which enabled a mouse to live 1,819 days – the equivalent of 180 human years. Stephen Spindler restricted caloric intake to extend the lifespan of mice by 15%. Sandy Keith created a nurturing environment to help a mouse live 1,551 days. Z. Dave Sharp used a rapamycin therapy to extend life by 14% for female mice and 9% for males.

The MPrize achieved what it set out to do. We wanted the world to understand that there are many ways to lengthen lifespans.  We also wanted to overcome a cultural and scientific reluctance about anti-ageing research.

Honestly, when we launched the MPrize, science was skeptical. The concept of longevity was deemed science fiction – or worse – the purview of crackpots.

Today, longevity research is very much mainstream science and attracting top scientific talent and big money. Don’t believe it? Google “longevity.” You’ll get more than 4.3 billion results in less than a second.

We have come a long way in the past 18 years.

Our initiatives now are more complex than extending the lives of mice.  Today, we are supporting efforts to extend the shelf life of human donor organs to make transplants more accessible, artificially produce those organs because the need for replacements is greater than the number of organs available, reverse the damage from Alzheimer’s disease, fight cancer and restore cells’ ability to fight disease and rebuild tissue.

We collaborated with NASA on a competition to identify ways to grow human tissue so that some day deep-space voyagers will have the tools to grow organs for transplant during their years-long missions.  And we are now partnering with the space agency on a competition to develop ways to produce tasty, nutritious food efficiently – which has applications for both deep-space travel and the needs of people here on earth.

We feel we did our part to extend the lifespan of mice.  Now we think it’s time to do the same with humans.  That’s why our mission is to “make 90 the new 50 by 2030.”

If you would like to join us in this mission, please donate.