Impetus funded 12 laboratories, more than one-third of which had not previously studied aging

Impetus funded 12 laboratories, more than one-third of which had not previously studied aging

On July 31, Norn Group announced the latest round of Impetus Grants. Funding went to 12 laboratories, and more than 35% of them had not previously worked in the biology of aging.

The Norn Group announcement describes the composition of the current funding round, not the number of experiments or any scientific findings. More than one-third of the twelve funded laboratories entered geroscience from other fields. In a small research field, this expands the group of people who will now formulate questions about aging and test them in the laboratory.

“More than 35% of the laboratories we funded in the latest round of Impetus Grants were new to aging research.”

Norn lists the recipients’ planned work: identifying genetic variants that protect against age-related diseases; testing at scale how individual genes alter cells; measuring aging through blood cells; and studying how proteins move through the aging body. These are different ways to address the same question: which age-related changes can be measured, and which of them can be modified.

Impetus provides a practical route into a new field. The program page offers grants of up to $500 thousand and an application decision within three weeks. Under the Impetus model, the short interval between application and funding allows a team to pay for its first experiments before committing to the field for the long term.

Since 2021, Impetus has directed more than $34 million toward aging research and supported 145 projects. Over that period, more than 20% of recipients also came from other fields. In the latest round, the proportion of such laboratories exceeded 35%. In this context, a grant buys more than time and reagents. It gives a new team the opportunity to test its hypothesis about aging.