Program 03 · Money out
Grants Program
Seed grants to external researchers, sized to unlock the far larger grants that follow. This is venture philanthropy, not charity.
What it does
- 01
Make seed grants of 25k to 250k US dollars to external researchers, both open-call and directed, starting with STRC and adjacent hearing-loss loci.
- 02
Size each grant to buy the preliminary data a lab needs to win a grant ten to fifty times larger downstream.
- 03
Record every grant over 25k as a public decision, with the reasoning, so the trail is auditable.
Why it matters
This is the move that has repeatedly turned small early capital into approved therapies. Seed grants of 50k to 100k let a university lab generate the data that unlocked 1.2M dollars from the NIH and a disease foundation in the Usher 1F case. The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation put roughly 150M dollars into the research that became Kalydeco, then sold the royalty rights for 3.3 billion and recycled it into the field.
Where it stands
Planning. The first seed grant is being scoped now, for STRC mouse-model and vector work. We do not name a recipient lab publicly until the grant agreement is signed.