Martin Borch Jensen, Gordian

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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