Methuselah Foundation, a medical non-profit dedicated to extending healthy human life, today announced that it has made an investment in Silverstone Solutions, Inc., a San Francisco-based innovator in life science computing. Silverstone is the leading provider of software that matches recipients and donors in Kidney Paired Donations (KPDs). With this infusion of funding, Methuselah Foundation and Silverstone Solutions will partner to create an online NewOrgan Registry that will connect the millions of people who could benefit from new organs by making their collective medical information available to clinical researchers and scientists. This funding further advances the strategy of the Methuselah Foundation to accelerate medical research that delivers fundamental technologies to extend healthy human life.
“With our application now proven, Silverstone will be taking the MatchMaker product to the rest of the kidney transplant world, and beyond”
“Silverstone’s proprietary MatchMaker product is a prime example of using information technology to extend healthy human life,” said Methuselah Foundation CEO David Gobel. “Our strategic partnership with Silverstone, an organ pair matching innovator, will save lives today, and many more tomorrow. Our investment will vastly increase the opportunity to source and match organs by moving Silverstone’s MatchMaker to the Internet, making it available not only to the largest regional medical systems, but to each and every local kidney clinic. Silverstone’s efforts are aligned with our mission of recognizing and rewarding technologists whose work helps extend life. We see a variety of opportunities to apply Silverstone’s technology to other organs and tissues, and widen the circle of potential recipients who can find suitable donors through the use of this innovative product.”
“We are very happy to be working in a strategic partnership with Methuselah Foundation,” said Silverstone CEO David Jacobs. “Their innovative approach is exactly what is needed in the organ transplant world, and the medical field in general. This investment will allow Silverstone to make product enhancements that will significantly increase the number of people we can serve. We look forward to working with Methuselah Foundation to transform organ transplantation worldwide.” This strategic partnership is designed to go hand in hand with Methuselah Foundation's recent founding investment in Organovo, the recognized world leader in commercially available 3D tissue printing.
“The kidney matching capability of MatchMaker and the tissue printing capabilities of Organovo's tissue printer heralds the dawning of a whole new era in organ transplantation, regenerative medicine and in the not too distant future – the creation of whole new replacement organs from one's own cells,” noted Gobel. “As a result, the Foundation's donors have made yet another significant contribution to save, extend and improve significant numbers of lives.”
Powerful algorithms in Silverstone’s MatchMaker product maximize the number of potential organ matches in the recipient/donor pool, and improve the medical quality of the matches. Piloted at a major West Coast hospital transplant center, SilverStone’s MatchMaker software has been in use since 2006, and has proven itself to be a valuable life-saving tool, already significantly increasing living donor yields – and saving over 60 lives. “With our application now proven, Silverstone will be taking the MatchMaker product to the rest of the kidney transplant world, and beyond,” noted Jacobs.
Helping deliver such breakthrough life extending technologies to market, in conjunction with multi-million dollar performance prizes that Methuselah Foundation presents to leading medical researchers, helps accelerate technological and biological advances in regenerative medicine. Methuselah Foundation, thanks in large part to the generosity of its donors, funds multiple strategies designed develop medical innovations. The MLife Sciences program, the Methuselah Foundation’s investment arm, seeks long-term strategies to combat the progressive, degenerative process of biological aging.
NIH grants $2.6 million to explore the effects of high blood-pressure drugs in CKD patients