SOURCE OF WEALTH: Cycad Group
FUNDING AREAS: Medical research, aging, Higher Education
OVERVIEW: In 1965, Paul Glenn founded the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, a vehicle devoted to supporting basic research in the molecular biology of aging and age-related diseases. The foundation has been a leader in this field for decades. Available tax filings indicate that the foundation awarded over $10.5 million in grants from 2017 to 2018. Glenn has also bankrolled aging research at his alma maters Harvard and Princeton, as well as other institutions such as the Buck Institute, MIT, UCSF and Stanford University.
BACKGROUND: Paul F. Glenn received a B.A. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Glenn worked in the world of investment banking and later private equity and venture capital, where he became an early-stage investor in a number of companies. Glenn is currently a chairman and director of Cycad Group, a venture capital firm.
ISSUES:
AGING RESEARCH: The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research supports its programs through the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), a more than three decades old outfit that has supported the science of healthier aging and has provided grants to more than 3,000 scientists. The Glenn/AFAR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for Translational Research on Aging supports postdoctoral fellows who specifically direct their research toward translational findings and who will demonstrate how their research will have direct benefits for human aging. The Glenn/AFAR Breakthroughs in Gerontology Awards provides support to “a small number of pilot research programs that may be of relatively high risk but which offer significant promise of yielding transforming discoveries in the fundamental biology of aging.”
Glenn has also supported aging research centers at universities and research institutions. The Paul F. Glenn Center for Aging Research at University of Michigan is one of these, and began its operations in September 2014. Other outfits include The Glenn Center For Quantitative Aging Research at Princeton University, and the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging at Harvard Medical School.
LOOKING FORWARD: Expect Glenn to stay laser-focused on aging research, as he has been for decades.
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