A longevity researcher and wealthy backers launch fast grants to fund ‘crazy ideas’ in anti-aging research
Martin Borch Jensen was attending a small conference earlier this year when Patrick Collison, the billionaire CEO of Stripe, got on stage to talk about Covid Fast Grants, the fund he co-launched in April 2020 to help researchers quickly pivot their work to address the pandemic.
Collison, economist Tyler Cowen, and bioengineer Patrick Hsu set up Fast Grants after it became clear that, despite the emerging crisis, many researchers were waiting months to get through the NIH’s bureaucratic grant process. They raised $50 million and funded trials on repurposed drugs, the development of saliva-based tests, and research on long Covid, among other efforts.
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