GU researchers land $50 million award to predict protein structure malformations. By Audrey Zhang, Hoya Staff Writer - October 23, 2026 A Georgetown University research team earned a $51.7 million federal grant to understand disease-causing proteins and develop new treatment strategies, Georgetown's School of Medicine announced Oct. 12. The four-year project, which Georgetown co-leads alongside the nonprofit Buck Institute for Research on Aging, brings together researchers from 10 academic institutions and seven industry partners. The Georgetown team will specifically focus on two specific proteins: tau, implicated in Alzheimer's disease, and EWS::FLI1, implicated in Ewing's sarcoma. Dr. Anna Riegel, Georgetown University Medical Center's vice president for research, said the award reflects the confidence of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a federal funding agency, in the project's bold scientific approach. "ARPA-H recognized the potential of this ambitious approach and is making a major investment in research that could lead to a significant leap forward in our understanding of how disordered protein structure plays a role in disease development and progression," Riegel wrote to The Hoya. "It's also an exciting opportunity for our graduate students and trainees to work alongside leading researchers and gain experience in the kind of collaborative science that will shape the future of biomedical research." A typical protein has a stable structure because it folds into predictable shapes. But a special class, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), instead shifts between many forms depending on their surroundings inside the cell. While this adaptability is useful in healthy cells, IDPs can morph into harmful states and clump together in patients with neurodegenerative diseases or cancer. Most treatments focus on harmful proteins with stable structures because drugs can target their specific shapes. With no such fixed shape, however, IDPs have long been considered "undruggable." Georgetown's research looks to change that. Georgetown's Dr. Priyanka Joshi, in partnership with the Buck Institute's Dr. Kai Zhou, is leading a project called SEEDS, comprised of Georgetown's INTREPID team and the Buck's SHIFT team, to detect protein misfolding and clumping at early stages. Zhou said that while existing tools such as AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence system, can predict protein shapes, IDPs remain a black box that experiments have yet to capture. "When you ask AlphaFold about a disordered region, it essentially says 'this part is floppy,'" Zhou wrote to The Hoya. "Our project builds the missing ground truth: we measure hundreds of disordered proteins one molecule at a time under healthy and disease-like conditions, and train models on those measurements." Joshi said the INTREPID team deliberately chose to study two seemingly different proteins to reveal broader patterns across IDPs. "Tau and EWS::FLI1 are so different, and yet they share something fundamental," Joshi wrote to The Hoya. "Both are intrinsically disordered, and both have resisted conventional drug discovery for exactly that reason. If the rules we uncover hold for two proteins this different, that's strong evidence we're learning something general rather than something specific to one disease." Zhou said the team is trying to understand IDP "grammar," or the connection between a protein's sequence, environment and behavior. "A grammar is the rulebook connecting sequence and environment to what the protein actually does," Zhou wrote. "With it, you could look at a protein or a patient mutation nobody has studied and predict its behavior, and you could design a molecule that recognizes only the pathological state while leaving the healthy ones alone." Dr. Jeffrey Toretsky, a pediatric oncologist at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and INTREPID collaborator whose lab studies the disordered EWS::FLI1 protein, said the project's reach could extend beyond Ewing's sarcoma and Alzheimer's. "The mechanisms of how proteins interact can have disordered elements, and those are sort of the undiscovered country of protein interaction," Toretsky told The Hoya. "If we figure those things out, the potential for creating drugs to modulate these processes is essentially, as I can see, endless." Dr. Scott Turner, another INTREPID collaborator who leads Georgetown's memory disorders program, said understanding the IDPs' mechanisms could drive advances in diagnostics and therapeutics. "Developing better diagnostic tools to find misfolded proteins at the earliest stage could help start treating or even prevent neurodegenerative diseases from starting in the first place," Turner told The Hoya. "The other big area is therapeutics. Are there ways to find new drugs to bind to these proteins and prevent them from misfolding or aggregating? Then we would probably come up with better drugs to treat or prevent these diseases." Joshi said the partnership and grant have been as much about teamwork and collaboration as about science. "It felt like someone had written a call for exactly the problem I couldn't stop thinking about, but I also knew no single lab could answer it," Joshi wrote. "Combining SHIFT and INTREPID into SEEDS made the whole stronger, and it's been genuinely exciting to build that partnership with Kai and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging." Donate to The Hoya Your donation will support the student journalists of Georgetown University. Your contribution will allow The Hoya to purchase equipment and cover its annual website hosting costs.

Training for a longer, healthier life: Eric Verdin takes on the Super Age Games. The Buck's CEO will join participants in New York City for eight challenges that put physical, cognitive and social fitness to the test. For Eric Verdin, MD, extending healthspan is both a scientific mission and a personal commitment. On November 7, the Buck Institute's president and CEO will take that commitment onto the competition floor at the inaugural Super Age Games in New York City. Created by longevity media company Super Age in partnership with the Buck, the Games bring a different focus to fitness competition: the abilities that help people stay strong, sharp and independent as they age. Participants will tackle eight trials spanning physical strength, cardiovascular fitness, balance, cognition and social skills. The goal is to give people a clearer picture of their capabilities, along with motivation to work on areas where they can improve. "The Super Age Games put all of the healthspan markers that matter in one place, on one day, so people can actually see where they stand," says Verdin. "I think it is going to be a blast to participate, and I promise to share my results!" Bringing healthspan into everyday life At the Buck, researchers study the biology of aging to find ways to extend the healthy years of life. The Games offer a hands-on way to engage with that mission, translating an interest in longevity into challenges people can prepare for, experience and learn from. The emphasis is on abilities with meaning beyond the competition floor. Carrying groceries, navigating an uneven sidewalk, chasing around grandchildren, and staying engaged in the community all draw on a combination of physical and mental capacities. The eight trials explore different aspects of those capabilities. The Over Under challenges agility and explosive movement, while The Inferno tests cardiovascular capacity. The Tightrope focuses on balance and stability, The Hang on grip strength and sustained effort, The Net on functional strength and coordination, and The Super Age 800on endurance while carrying a load. Two additional challenges broaden the picture. The Synapse, powered by NeuroTracker, tests cognitive performance under load. The Sync examines relational intelligence and social capacity, bringing the human connections that matter to healthy aging into the competition. Together, the trials encourage participants to think more broadly about what it means to be fit for the years ahead. A starting point for improvement Participants will receive results that highlight their performance across the challenges, along with a "Super Age" score incorporating performance and self-reported lifestyle information. That score is an estimate, rather than a precise measure of biological age or a prediction of how long someone will live. Its practical value lies in helping people identify strengths, recognize opportunities for improvement and set goals. Organizers also provide training resources ahead of the event, making preparation part of the experience. And the shared format brings another element: a community of people encouraging one another to stay active and engaged. For the Buck, Verdin's participation puts a familiar mission into motion. Healthspan is about preserving the ability to do the things that make life meaningful. The Games offer an opportunity to test those abilities, challenge ourselves, and have some fun along the way. The Super Age Games take place November 7, 2026, in New York City. Learn more about the event and how to participate. Science is showing that while chronological aging is inevitable, biological aging is malleable. There's a part of it that you can fight, and Buck Institute is getting closer and closer to winning that fight. Eric Verdin, MD, Buck Institute President and CEO

Oracle and Buck Institute for Research on Aging advance landmark federal aging research initiative. Sep 23, 2026, 08:35 ET Buck Institute aims to advance bioinformatics using Oracle Life Sciences Data Intelligence to transform aging research into a predictive, data-driven science ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit - Oracle and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging are collaborating to advance intelligence into age-related disease and support discoveries that can extend the healthy years of life. Buck will leverage Oracle Life Sciences Data Intelligence, which encompasses 122 million+* de-identified longitudinal Oracle Health Real-World Data records and advanced analytics to research biomarkers that aim to enable early detection and targeted intervention for aging-related complications. The research will also be used to pursue qualification for the first FDA-grade "Intrinsic Capacity Score," a vitality score for healthy aging. Decoding Age-Related Illnesses The Buck Institute serves as one of the analytics and bioinformatics engines for the Stanford University-led Transforming Health: Reclaiming Intrinsic Vitality for Everyone (THRIVE) consortium of scientists. THRIVE is a component of the PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (PROSPR) program from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The THRIVE team's goal is to develop a validated measure of physical and mental capacity designed to help predict long-term health trajectories and enable earlier interventions for age-related decline in a patient's health journey. Using Oracle Life Sciences Data Intelligence, researchers at Buck Institute aim to construct patient cohorts and apply advanced analytics to decades of longitudinal health records to identify subtle clinical changes that may indicate frailty or chronic disease years before onset. The team plans to build a statistically validated model capable of predicting which patients are at greatest risk - and when - to support proactive care and accelerate the path to clinical trials for aging-related interventions. "Understanding how and why we age is one of the most complex challenges in modern medicine," said Dr. David Furman, PhD, Buck Institute for Research on Aging. "Having the right solution and accessible patient data to aid in the study, discovery, and measurement of health span is essential. Oracle Life Sciences Data Intelligence, together with the depth and breadth of its real-world data, will enable us to begin to link early clinical signals and long-term outcomes. We hope to fundamentally change how to predict, delay, and address age-related decline." With Oracle Life Sciences Data Intelligence, Buck Institute's researchers gain secure, hosted access to a vast repository of de-identified real-world health data. They can log in, build cohorts, run queries, and conduct bioinformatics workflows without extensive data preparation. This will help move more quickly from scientific hypothesis to analytical output in support of THRIVE's goals. "Buck Institute is helping lead one of the most ambitious efforts to transform research on aging into a predictive science, and Oracle is proud to provide the data and analytics foundation to accelerate this work," said Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Health and Life Sciences. "By combining advanced AI-driven analytics with one of the industry's largest collections of de-identified longitudinal real-world health data, our solution can help researchers uncover earlier signals of age-related decline. This collaboration could reshape how we understand aging, and how to aid early intervention research to help people live healthier, longer lives." Oracle Life Sciences Data Intelligence is a generative AI-enabled, cloud-native analytics environment that unifies owned, third-party, and real-world data into a single research-ready workspace. Built for life sciences organizations that need to move from data to insight without complex data engineering, the solution deploys AI capabilities that can clarify research intent, generate and refine hypotheses, propose analyses for review, and surface evidence within user-defined guardrails, with full visibility into data lineage. To learn more about how Oracle Life Sciences Data Intelligence can accelerate discovery, clinical trials, pharmacovigilance, and commercialization, visit: https://www.oracle.com/life-sciences/data-intelligence/. *All data pulled from Oracle Health Data Intelligence and current as of May 2026 and calculated using distinct person IDs, which leverage a multipoint match algorithm to account for and remove duplicates within a single health system; patients who have visited multiple health systems may appear more than once in the data. This research was, in part, funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the United States Government. About Oracle Life Sciences Oracle Life Sciences is a leader in cloud technology, pharmaceutical research, and consulting, trusted globally by professionals in both large and emerging companies engaged in clinical research and pharmacovigilance, throughout the therapeutic development lifecycle, including pre- and post-drug launch activities. With more than 20 years of experience, Oracle Life Sciences is committed to supporting clinical development and leveraging real-world evidence to deliver innovation and accelerate advancements - empowering the life sciences industry to improve patient outcomes. Learn more at www.oracle.com/lifesciences. About Oracle Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at www.oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle, Java, MySQL and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. NetSuite was the first cloud company - ushering in the new era of cloud computing. About the Buck Institute Our success will ultimately change healthcare. At the Buck, we aim to end the threat of age-related diseases for this and future generations by bringing together the most capable and passionate scientists from a broad range of disciplines to identify and impede the ways in which we age. An independent, nonprofit institution, our goal is to increase human healthspan, or the healthy years of life. Globally recognized as the pioneer and leader in efforts to target aging, the number one risk factor for serious diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, macular degeneration, heart disease, and diabetes, the Buck wants to help people live better longer. Learn more at: https://buckinstitute.org. SOURCE Oracle