Some ideas that could transform longevity go unfunded because they’re too early for government funding or VC. Through @impetusgrants, we give scientists fast grants of up to $500,000 to pursue these breakthrough projects. We’ve deployed $34M across 146 projects, with just 1.1% overhead. We make funding decisions within three weeks, at least 14× faster than the NIH’s award timeline. So far: 240+ Impetus-supported publications, from aging clocks to clinical trials. A few examples: Biomarkers for faster aging drugs We’ve supported multiple projects on what we believe is longevity’s top priority: speeding up the cycle of drug discovery and testing. These include Raghav Sehgal and colleagues’ “Systems Age,” a single blood test capturing how 11 physiological systems age at different rates, and TranslAGE, a platform for the systematic validation of epigenetic clocks. doi.org/10.1038/s43587-025-0… doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.16.6… CAR-T immunotherapies: from cancer to aging Corina Amor’s team used CAR-T therapies to clear senescent cells, a major contributor to age-related dysfunction. Her team’s CAR-T cells improved glucose control, exercise capacity and intestinal regeneration in mice. Impetus was the lab’s first grant. doi.org/10.1038/s43587-023-0… doi.org/10.1038/s43587-025-0… DNA repair in the world’s longest-lived mammal Bowhead whales can live for over 200 years. We supported Vera Gorbunova’s team, which found that increasing the whale protein CIRBP in cultured human cells improved DNA repair and reduced chromosome damage. In fruit flies, it extended lifespan and increased resistance to radiation damage. doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-0… Large open datasets mapping how the body ages Junyue Cao’s team built PanSci, which profiles 21.8 million mouse cells across 14 organs, revealing which cell populations expand or decline with age. It was the largest single-cell atlas of mammalian aging at publication. A follow-up atlas spans 21 mouse tissues, mapping changes in cell populations and gene regulation. doi.org/10.1126/science.adn3… doi.org/10.1126/science.adw6… Genetic clues to disease vulnerability Ryan Dhindsa’s team identified rare variants disrupting ITSN1 that were associated with roughly tenfold higher odds of Parkinson’s disease. Follow-up experiments in a fly model showed that loss of the gene worsened neuronal damage and movement problems. The team also identified genetic variants associated with persistent Epstein–Barr virus DNA in the blood, pointing to differences in how the immune system recognises the virus. doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.202… doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-1… We aim to seed ideas that grow into new research areas and paths toward treatments, and bring exceptional scientists into aging who might otherwise work elsewhere. norn.group/impetus-grants