An interview with Martin Borch Jensen, Co-founder of Gordian Biotechnology
最近，我赶上了马丁·博奇·詹森（Martin Borch Jensen）, the Chief Science Officer of the biotech company Gordian Biotechnology. Gordian is a therapeutics company focused on the diseases of aging.
Martin did his Ph.D. in the biology of aging, received a prestigious NIH award to jumpstart an academic career, but decided to return the grant to launch Gordian. Recently, he designed and launched a $26 million competition called寿命动力赠款。该计划已经资助了98家赠款，以帮助科学家解决他们认为是老化生物学中最重要的问题（也称为Geroscience）。越来越多的研究表明，存在着潜在的衰老生物学机制，并且有可能延迟多种衰老的多种慢性疾病的发作，从而使人们的生活更长，更健康。
我采访了马丁，不仅是因为我认为Geroscience领域很重要，而且还因为我认为Martin扮演的角色对科学和社会具有重大好处，并且应该在其他领域进行复制。从本质上讲，有了这项工作，您可以说马丁是整个Geroscience领域的策略师，并为竞争性，基于优点的资金分配设计了慈善家，例如Juan Benet，James Fickel，Jed，JedMcCaleb，Karl Pfleger，Fred Ehrsam和Vitalik Buterin对此充满信心，并且愿意支持。马丁的角色具有许多潜在的好处：
- Many philanthropists are interested in supporting scientific research, but don’t have the professional staff capable of identifying areas of research that we are under-investing in. If more leading researchers were willing to identify areas where there is a strong case for additional philanthropic support, and design a process for the allocation of funding that inspires confidence, philanthropists would find it easier to support scientific research. Currently, there are almost 2,000 families in the U.S. alone that have $500 million in assets, and their current level of philanthropy is only 1.2 percent of their assets.
- Researchers could propose funding mechanisms that are designed to address shortcomings associated with the status quo. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison launched快速赠款这为Covid-19与14天内相关项目提供了赠款。其他慈善家设计了资金机制，这些机制是专门为支持高风险，高回报想法而设计的，通过授权审稿人支持非友好的想法。施密特期货和阿斯特拉研究所正在支持专注的研究组织，针对给定领域中关键瓶颈的项目，并且很难使用传统的资金机制。
- 早期的慈善支持可以促进NIH等联邦科学机构的额外支持。例如，NIH研究部分中的同伴审稿人通常希望在建议特定项目资金之前查看“初步数据”。慈善支持不仅可以为特定的科学预测提供证据，而且可以为资助和组织科学研究的新方法提供证据。
- 物理学家麦克斯·普朗克（Max Planck）观察到科学一次进行了一场葬礼。早期的职业科学家可能会有新的想法，对这些想法的慈善支持可能会加速科学进步。
以下是我和Martin Borch Jensen之间通过电子邮件进行的问答副本。
Tom Kalil: What motivated you to launch Impetus grants?
马丁·博奇·詹森（Martin Borch Jensen）: Hearing Patrick Collison describe the outcomes of the COVID-19 Fast Grants. Coming from the world of NIH funding, it seemed to me that the results of this super-fast program were very similar to the year-ish cycle of applying for and receiving a grant from the NIH. If the paperwork and delays could be greatly reduced, while supporting an underfunded field, that seemed unambiguously good.
My time in academia had also taught me that a number of ideas exist, with great potential impact but that fall outside of the most common topics or viewpoints and thus have trouble getting funding. And within aging biology, several ‘unfundable’ ideas turned out to shape the field (for example, DNA methylation ‘clocks’, rejuvenating factors in young blood, and the recent focus on partial epigenetic reprogramming). So what if we focused funding on ideas with the potential to shape thinking in the field, even if there’s a big risk that the idea is wrong? Averaged across a lot of projects, it seemed like that could result in more progress overall.
TK: What enabled you to do this, given that you also have a full-time job as CSO of Gordian?
MBJ：我很幸运（或有先见之明）最近开始为想要进入衰老生物学领域的才华横溢的人提供指导计划。这Longevity Apprenticeship计划集中在为现实生活项目中做出贡献，因此动力是一个完美的选择。在Edmar Ferreira和Tara Mei的一些帮助下，主要是Lada Nuzhna和Kush Sharma的第一任学徒，帮助建立了一个非营利组织来托管该计划，为审阅者设计了网站和用户界面，并与大学进行了沟通，并做了很多吨运营工作。
TK：您在竞争方面做出了哪些最重要的设计决策，它如何影响竞争的结果？
MBJ：一个很大的是在评估想法的影响时对申请人视而不见。审稿人的讨论非常集中于“如果真实的话，这将改变事物”。我们没有反事实，但是根据研究生和博士后的奖励数量（将近四分之一），我认为我们的决定与大多数资助者的做出不同。
另一个创新是与最高的Geroscience期刊之一合作，组织一个特殊问题，动力获奖者将能够发布负面结果 - 实验表明他们的假设是不正确的。In doing so, we both wanted to empower researchers to take risks and go for their boldest ideas (since you’re expected to publish steadily, risky projects are disincentivized for career reasons), and at the same time take a step towards more sharing of negative results so that the whole field can learn from every project.
TK：动力的未来可能有什么可能？您对有兴趣支持Geroscience感兴趣的慈善家有什么建议？
MBJ：我很高兴拉达（其中一位学徒）将接任将动力赠款作为反复出现的资金来源。她已经开始筹款，我们有很多专注主题支持的想法（例如，可以在临床试验中使用的衰老的生物标志物）。我们还计划一个研讨会，获奖者可以开会，以培养一个有大胆想法和不同专业领域的人群的社区。
One thing that I think could greatly benefit the geroscience field, is to fund more tools and methods development, including and especially by people who aren’t pureblooded ‘aging biologists’. Our field is very limited in what we’re able to measure within aging organisms, as well as measuring the relationships between different areas of aging biology. Determining causal relationships between two mechanisms, e.g. DNA damage and senescence, requires an extensive study when we can’t simultaneously measure both with high time resolution. And tool-building is not a common focus within geroscience. So I think there’d be great benefit to steering talented researchers who are focused on that towards applications in geroscience. If done early in their careers, this could also serve to pull people into a long-term focus on geroscience, which would be a terrific return on investment. The main challenges to this approach are to make sure the people are sincerely interested in aging biology (or at least properly incentivized to solve important problems there), and that they’re solving real problems for the field. The latter might be accomplished by pairing them up with geroscience labs.
TK: If you were going to try to find other people who could play a similar role for another scientific field, what would you look for?
MBJ：我认为使动力良好的最难部分是找到合适的审阅者。您想要知识渊博的人，但要接受新想法。乐观，但也很关键。而不是偏向于自己或朋友的研究主题。因此，首先，寻找具有这些特征并在该领域花费很长时间的行李者，以便他们知道其他研究人员的趋势和声誉。就我而言，我在学术界呆了很长时间，但现在跳到了初创企业，所以我不再有一只狗参加战斗。我认为这很可能是避免偏见的好处。
TK：您从考虑到这种模型的慈善家和可能想领导其领域的一项计划的科学家的过程中学到了什么？
MBJ：一件事是，有空间可以改善如何进行评论的基本用户界面。我们根据我在审查论文和赠款时想要的内容设计了一个UI。多位审稿人没有提及我们，这是他们的经历。我们只花了几个星期来建立这个。因此，我想说的是，这是在努力使事情在每个步骤中都能顺利进行。
如上所述，获得正确的审阅者是关键。我们的过程在很大程度上很顺利，因为审阅者都在需要动作针头而不是偏向特定主题的项目上保持一致。
但是，我们学到或验证的最重要的事情是，这种快速模型效果很好。我们将看到事情的奏效，但是我认为，尽管可能有更多的失败，但这种动力很有可能比通过传统机制分配的相同数量的资金支持更多的突破。我认为这是慈善家愿意拥抱的权衡。
TK：我们还应该考虑其他哪些新颖的资金和组织研究方法？
MBJ：嗯，这是一个艰难的人。许多有趣的实验已经在进行。
One idea we’ve been throwing around in the Longevity Apprenticeship is ‘Impetus for clinical trials’. Fast Grants funded several trials of off-patent drugs, and at least one (fluvoxamine) now looks very promising. Impetus funded some trials as well, but within geroscience in particular, there are several compounds with enough evidence that human trials are warranted, but which are off-patent and thus unlikely to be pursued by biopharma.
对“替代资金来源”是一个挑战that most work is still funded by the NIH. So there has to be a possibility of continuity of research funded by the two mechanisms. Given the amount of funding we had for Impetus (4-7% of the NIA’s budget for basic aging biology), what we had in mind was funding bold ideas to the point where sufficient proof of concept data could be collected so that the NIH would be willing to provide additional funding. Whatever you do, keeping in mind how the projects will garner continued support is important.
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