Extracellular Matrix (Winner)

What is the most undervalued area for longevity progress we should pursue?ECM Aging is vastly understudied and incredibly important. It is upstream of 6 hallmarks of aging, involved in major causes of death like cardiovascular disease and cancer, and plays a large part in looking and feeling old. There are no appropriate tools to measure and intervene.Where are we today? Where would we like to be?Short term – build connections between existing ECM and aging biologists. Medium term – build tools and prioritization. Long term – create interventions for ECM rejuvenation.What public and private actions have the biggest impact on those goals?We should fund ECM x Aging experts, create progress on an aging ECM platform, and build interventions on this platform to demonstrate rejuvenation.What people, funding, resources, experiments would be required to test this hypothesis?Create a SENS ECM workshop ($10k), a Biotech Connection Bay Area research project ($10k), propose an Impetus grant category for ECM, and improve the ECM node on the Longevity Tech Tree