Hevolution, the Saudi-funded healthspan non-profit behemoth, has been around for about two years, and it hasn’t been wasting any time, funding research and investing in biotech companies. With its yearly budget touching 1 billion dollars, Hevolution is the biggest non-profit donor and one of the most important players in this field today.
Hevolution touts a holistic approach by working across the “healthspan ecosystem”, which includes everything from influencing public opinion to funding fundamental research into aging biology. For now, however, Hevolution mostly focuses on the latter.
Hevolution is also the organizer of the Global Healthspan Summit in Riyadh. The first one, which was held earlier this year, attracted a record 1,500 participants. The next one will be held in February 2025.
Hevolution’s CEO, Dr. Mehmood Khan, is a charismatic leader with a trove of experience in some of the biggest companies in the world. He is also an MD specializing in endocrinology.
Tens of millions in new grants
At a press conference today, Hevolution announced a funding milestone of over $400 million in investments in healthspan over the past 21 months along with a new round of grants.
A $20.2 million grant will be awarded to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for research focused on senescence and aging. The research will be led by Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, a leader in the aging field and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This is one of the most exciting times in the research on the biology of aging, due to the multiple experimental proofs that show we can modulate the way organisms age. However, we all fear that the scarcity of funding may hinder progress,” Cuervo said. “Timely support through the many programs of the Hevolution Foundation will be key to recruiting and retaining new talent in this field, maintaining momentum, and accelerating the discovery and implementation of gerotherapeutic interventions to ensure healthy aging.”
Northwestern University will receive a $32.3 million grant for proteostasis research led by Dr. Richard Morimoto, Bill and Gayle Cook Professor of Biology at Northwestern University. Loss of proteostasis (the regulation of the concentration, conformation, binding interactions, and location of individual protein molecules within a cell) is one of the hallmarks of aging.
“We are thrilled that the Proteostasis Consortium is partnering with the Hevolution Foundation to address this fundamental question on the biology of aging,” Morimoto said. “Our team, including researchers at Northwestern, the University of California San Francisco, the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, Stanford, Scripps Research, Harvard Medical School, and the Health Research Institute of Asturias, is working to provide new insights on the molecular biology of healthy aging and develop approaches to rejuvenate cellular and organismal health.”
Also announced today were a series of grant programs to support individual geroscience researchers, including:
- Hevolution Foundation Postdoctoral Training in Geroscience (HF-PTG), which will invest a total of $5 million over four years (recently began accepting applications)
- Hevolution Foundation Geroscience Research Opportunities (HF-GRO), providing up to $25 million in 2024 to fund projects in aging biology or geroscience (round two recently began accepting applications)
- Hevolution Foundation Geroscience in Latin America (HF-GLA), a pilot initiative providing up to $5M over four years to researchers in Latin America (will begin accepting applications in July)
Towards active prevention
Khan also touched on Hevolution’s vision. “We’re spending a decade of life in poor health — this is a decade too many,” he said. “Our current healthcare system focuses more on intervention, but our goal is to address the underlying causes of aging and age-related diseases. Geroscience and healthspan science are critically underfunded, which is why Hevolution is stepping up to bridge this gap. We are proud to be the world’s largest philanthropic funder in geroscience.”
Khan emphasized the immense economic and societal impact of populational aging, which will soon start straining global resources if we don’t find a way to extend healthy lifespan. The current reactive approach to healthcare is not producing additional gains in lifespan despite growing expenses. Hevolution’s vision for solving this is to move the global focus towards active prevention.
Population graying is a universal trend, Khan said, as all regions are getting older, including those that are relatively young today. Underdeveloped regions are particularly vulnerable because they lack the resources and the infrastructure needed to support their aging populations. “Estimates suggest that Africa will have more old people than any other continent in the world, given time,” Khan said. However, those regions also have more time to prepare and could produce the greatest impact in terms of healthy years of life.
Investments in biotech
To date, Hevolution has invested in two biotech companies. Aeovian Pharmaceuticals is working on a selective mTORC1 inhibitor, while Rubedo Biosciences is focused on senolytics. Answering a question from Lifespan.io, Khan said that this choice does not necessarily reflect Hevolution’s affinity towards any particular direction in aging research: “I don’t have a favorite child. We look at the usual things – the quality of the science, the management team, and the success that they’ve had, including the data that they present. I can tell you we’ve looked so far at about 200.” Khan promised new investment announcements soon.
Advocacy matters
We also asked Khan whether Hevolution has been active in the field of advocacy, which the foundation itself sees as a crucial element of the healthspan ecosystem. Khan confirmed that the company assigns high importance to advocacy and suggested that because of its sheer size and visibility, Hevolution has already contributed a lot to shifting the attention of the world’s decision makers towards aging. Khan has been talking to prominent government and business leaders, and he sees healthy aging “becoming a priority.”
“It’s not just Hevolution,” he said. “The work you’re doing, everybody’s doing – if this activity is somewhat synchronized and aligned on the terminologies we use, it will raise the bar, and we’re seeing evidence that that is the case.”
View the article at lifespan.io
