The big picture of our research and the challenge of funding it

 

The majority of all funding towards health sciences these days is directed towards understanding disease. This is quite understandable- we have enormously big demons to fight like cancer, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It is substantially within the government’s interest to fund research aimed at treating these diseases as to reduce future healthcare spending costs. It is also within the interests of pharmaceutical companies to study disease in order to develop new drugs for sale to treat these diseases. We do not deny that the study of disease needs to remain as the primary interest and aim for biomedical research. 

However, we also think that we need to take a broader view of the overall spectrum of human health, and that there may be key elements of our physiology and adaptations that we may be overlooking by neglecting the study of other human populations. There is extremely scant research being performed or funded on populations of humans that are doing the best in terms of health outcomes, whether it be aging, resistance to disease, or feats of physical performance. We want to perform research that includes the study of elite athletes- individuals who are breaking records in their sport or changing our perceptions of what humans are physically capable of doing. Understanding some of the secrets to the adaptations achieved through their intense training regimens has the potential to unlock new knowledge on the human condition that we can’t fully fathom right now or predict the future applications. Perhaps even towards fueling the best treatment solution for human disease, that of entirely preventing it in the first place.   

Athletes are particularly great for study as their primary adaptive tissue that holds the answers towards their success is skeletal muscle, a large, resilient, accessible, regenerative tissue system that can be safely biopsied from human subjects without harming them or their performance. Thus, a unique feature of our research is that we can study human muscle at multiple levels- that of the physiological, cellular and molecular, generating data that gives a more inclusive picture for how the athlete is adapting to their training and capable of their physical abilities. 

But this type of research is not going to be funded by conventional sources like the government or pharma companies anytime soon. We’ve tried to get this research funded by NIH and other sources only to be turned away. That’s why we’re turning to this new revolution for science funding, that of directly engaging the public, YOU, to fund our work. Crowdfunding truly is the best option for us- there are likely to be tons of people out there who are interested in the same scientific inquiries that we are, we just need to access them and get them on board. Our team has all the right tools and combinations of expertise to do this research, including the networked access to key elite athlete populations, an important feature that no other group performing muscle biopsies in the world has. We just need the money!