Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan launch new BioHub in New York

Who we're talking about: Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Zuckerberg you probably know as the CEO of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Chan is Zuckerberg's wife and a practicing pediatrician.

The two together run the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization which is dedicated to eliminating all disease by the end of the century.

And the news is: Zuckerberg and Chan just announced the launch of their New York BioHub. It's the third such BioHub, following ones in San Francisco (2016) and Chicago (March 2023).

NY BioHub will bring together scientists from top universities such as Columbia and Yale. Its goal is to bioengineer immune cells for the early detection, prevention, and ultimately treatment of diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's. The hub is financed by $250 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, along with $10 million each from New York State and New York City.

Why this is a big deal: If, like me, you're interested in longevity and anti-aging, it's easy to forget that there's a huge amount of related research and investing that's not explicitly labeled as "longevity". All that knowledge and investment is building up.

Research out of the Chan-Zuckerberg BioHubs might end up curing or eliminating individual diseases. But it might also give us insights and techniques to directly deal with the core issue of so much modern disease — that core cause being aging.

So what's next? Chan and Zuckerberg have pledged to donate 99% of their Meta stock to scientific research over time. I checked, and Zuckerberg's Meta stock is currently worth some $113 billion as of today. That's a lot of money, and hopefully it will fund a lot of medical breakthroughs in the coming years.