Today is one of those days when we must deliver some bad news. Science is hard, particularly when it concerns the biology of aging, and things do not always go to plan. There are no guarantees that a project will succeed, and, quite simply, the more shots on goal we can get, the more chance that one of them will get through.
The news today is an example of when things do not work out as hoped, and it is with a heavy heart that we report this update from the CellAge team, which worked on a project that the Lifespan.io community helped to raise funds for.
We are writing to regretfully inform you that our time at CellAge has come to an end. In the coming weeks, we will be closing down the project and the company. While it breaks our hearts to do so, unfortunately this is the only way forward at this time. We have contacted our crowdfunding partner LEAF and have returned all of the unused crowdfunding funds – we believe that it will be put to good use in accordance with the LEAF mission.
For the last few years, the CellAge team has been working with the aim to develop synthetic promoters that would be able to specifically identify senescent cells. We have partnered with a number of different organisations designing R&D plans and developing methods to achieve this goal. While we had a number of operational hurdles along the way, we have made progress. We believe that it is possible to build on top of our work; therefore, we will share the results and details of our findings with the wider scientific community and the general public.
We would like to thank everyone for their support and enthusiasm around this project. While this specific project has reached its conclusion, we remain passionate about improving healthspan and the quality of human life. We will continue to put our energy and hard work towards this goal.
Sincerely,
CellAge Team
While we are disappointed to hear this news from the project team, we should never shy away from reporting the truth, no matter how unpleasant or unpalatable it might be. Aging research is hard, and developing a successful company to take a project to market is a huge challenge; this time it did not succeed, but the next time it might. We will keep on trying until we win.
