Aging is the greatest risk factor for many of the diseases that dominate modern medicine, from cancer and neurodegeneration to immune dysfunction and more. Rather than study each disease individually, researchers in Brown’s Division of Biology and Medicine ask a more fundamental question: What if we could understand, and ultimately intervene in, the biology of aging itself?

To bring this vision to the next frontier, The Starr Foundation has committed $37.2 million to the Starr Healthspan Innovation Alliance, a five-year partnership between Brown University and Brown University Health. The funding will enable Brown University to build on and expand the work of the Center on the Biology of Aging, support groundbreaking laboratory research, and recruit leading researchers in the burgeoning field of geroscience, which is the study of the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms of aging. It will also expand clinical trials across Brown University Health, strengthening the ecosystem in which faculty-led research flows from laboratories to hospitals to patients.

“The Starr Foundation’s generous investment will enable Brown University and Brown University Health to advance a bold vision for the future of medicine focused on helping people live fuller, healthier lives as they age,” Brown University President Christina H. Paxson says. “By uniting world-class science at Brown with clinical care across the Brown University Health system, we can translate cutting-edge research into life-changing treatments for devastating conditions like cancer and dementia.”

John Sedivy, PhD, the Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology and associate dean and director of the Center on the Biology of Aging, is the principal investigator of the Alliance. Sedivy is a world-renowned researcher in cellular senescence, the process by which aging cells stop dividing but remain in the body, contributing to tissue dysfunction and inflammation.

The Center on the Biology of Aging is at the forefront of geroscience, with its scientists investigating whether they can slow, prevent, or reverse the cellular processes that cause aging, thereby delaying or preventing multiple diseases at once. The Starr Foundation’s investment will advance research to improve healthspan, the number of years a person lives free from chronic disease, pain, or major disability.

Bridging Bench to Bedside

The Starr Healthspan Innovation Alliance will turn laboratory breakthroughs into viable therapies by expanding the shared research ecosystem between Brown University and Brown University Health. The initiative establishes a complete transitional pathway, moving discoveries from basic biology into clinical trials, and ultimately into routine patient care.

The Alliance will invest directly in the health systems’ clinical research infrastructure. Funding will support specialized research staff, expand community-based trial enrollment, and foster strategic partnerships across industry and biomedical science. By combining Brown’s foundational strengths in geroscience with Brown University Health’s clinical trial network, the program will test novel interventions in diverse patient populations, dramatically shortening the time it takes for discoveries to reach the public. Together, they will leverage a clinical network unique in its regional scale and demographic diversity to validate new approaches and accelerate bedside implementation.

Beyond the research and treatments it may produce, the Alliance will also help train the next generation of scientists in the field. The Center has added three junior faculty members in epigenetics, the microbiome, and transposon biology, expanding its bench of expertise. The Starr Foundation’s investment will establish two new endowed faculty positions in geroscience and support research activities at the Center on the Biology of Aging, which has long been at the leading edge of research in this area.

“By directly connecting researchers at Brown’s world-class Center on the Biology of Aging with the clinical trials unit at Brown University Health, the initiative ensures that cutting-edge science and research can flourish from the bench to the bedside,” Mukesh K. Jain, MD, senior associate provost for life sciences, vice president for health affairs, and dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown, says. “This enables a rapid flow of innovation to identify new medicines, devices, and diagnostic tests, while building an integrated, comprehensive biomedical ecosystem that allows discoveries to move seamlessly to real-life impact.”

On the clinical side, the Alliance will launch an innovation fellows program, supporting five postdoctoral fellows annually as they work to develop new technologies. Entrepreneurs will mentor fellows through the process, helping turn lab findings into licensable therapies and even new companies. Crucially, Brown University Health’s infrastructure provides the real-world environment needed to evaluate these discoveries, linking academic commercialization directly with patient care. Funding from the Alliance will help identify and address some of the challenges in conducting clinical trials.

The Starr Healthspan Innovation Alliance aims to establish Brown as a national leader in translating geroscience from the lab to the people it is meant to serve, with the ultimate goal of extending the time humans can live well and in good health.

Historic Investment in the Human Healthspan

The Starr Foundation was established in 1955 by Cornelius Vander Starr, a global entrepreneur and humanitarian, and has been stewarded forward across generations by longtime foundation chair Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg, and now by his son Jeffrey. In addition to his role as Starr Foundation chair, Jeffrey Greenberg is a dedicated Class of 1973 alumnus and a former trustee of the Corporation of Brown University. He is a member of Brown University Health’s Board of Directors.

“What makes this alliance so compelling is the extraordinary opportunity to bridge laboratory research directly with clinical trials and patient care,” Jeffrey Greenberg says. “By uniting the visionary scientists at Brown University’s Center on the Biology of Aging with the dedicated health care and research teams across Brown University Health, the alliance is poised to dramatically speed up the progress from scientific discovery to life-transforming clinical trials.”