 Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Manuel Serrano as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Manuel Serrano obtained his PhD in 1991, from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. From 1991 to 1996, Serrano worked in the team of David Beach in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY. During this period, Serrano made his most important discovery with the identification and characterization of the gene p16, one of the most important genes for anti-cancer protection. Serrano returned to Spain in 1997 to lead a research group, first at the National Center of Biotechnology (CNB), and then, from 2003 to 2017, at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), both in Madrid. In 2017, Serrano moved to the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), in Barcelona. Manuel Serrano is internationally recognized in the field of tumor suppression. In addition to the discovery of p16, one of his main discoveries has been the identification of cellular senescence as a main anti-oncogenic response. Recently, his laboratory has also shown that cellular senescence participates in several tissue remodeling processes during embryo development. The Serrano team was pioneer in the generation of genetically-modifed mice resistant to cancer and found a link between tumor suppressor genes and aging. In recent years, the research interests of Manuel Serrano have extended to metabolism and cellular reprogramming in relation to aging. The Serrano laboratory was first in demonstrating that cellular reprogramming into pluripotency is possible within an organism, and this discover was considered Advance of the Year 2013 by Nature Medicine.More recently, Serrano has reported in Science that in vivo reprogramming is enhanced by the coexistence of tissue injury thanks to the production of the interleukin IL-6. The focus of his laboratory is now to apply their knowledge on senescence and reprogramming to degenerative diseases such as lung, kidney and heart fibrosis. "Manuel has been a world-leading researcher in cell senescence for decades, and participated in various of our conferences starting many years ago. His latest brekthrough, which he will discuss in Berlin, is one of those head-slappingly brilliant concepts that I encounter at most once per year, combining a couple of long-established ideas in a completely novel way that potentially delivers far more than the sum of the parts. I won’t spoil the surprise here!" says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Graham Pawelec as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Dr. Pawelec received an MA in Natural Sciences in 1974 and a PhD in Transplantation Immunology in 1982 from the University of Cambridge, UK and is currently Professor of Experimental Immunology at the Center for Medical Research, Second Department of Internal Medicine, University of Tübingen Medical School, Tübingen, Germany. He is a Visiting Professor, Nottingham Trent University, UK and at King´s College London, holds an Honorary Chair at Manchester University, UK and is also a Faculty Member, Cancer Solutions Program, Health Sciences North Research Institute, Sudbury, ON, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and is Co-Editor-in-Chief of “Cancer Immunology Immunotherapy”, and Deputy Editor of the “Journal of Translational Medicine” and “Immunity and Aging”. He has been active on multiple Advisory Boards for Pharma, review panels for granting agencies and European Commission road mapping exercises. He has organised or co-organised many international conferences, most recently the Keystone Conference “Aging, Inflammation and Immunity”, Austin, TX, USA, 25.2.-1.3.2018, and Progress in Vaccination against Cancer 18 (PIVAC 18, Oslo, Norway, 3.-6.10.2018), the latter the most recent of a series of conferences which have taken place every year since 2001. His laboratory research focuses on immunity and ageing, particularly in the context of vaccination in cancer and infectious disease. His work on immune function in the elderly has led him to conclude that individualized manipulation of the immune system to enhance the generation of naïve T cells necessary for adaptive immunity against neoantigens, coupled with modulating the dysregulated state of innate immunity which contributes to inflammaging, will help to rebalance immune responses in older adults and restore appropriate immune protection while reducing the effects of “friendly fire” by misguided immune activity. "Graham is another speaker who has been a key member of the “SENS family” since its earliest days. He is one of the few eminent biogerontologists who can proudly claim to have spoken out regularly in favour of intervention in aging during the dark days when such talk was widely viewed by colleagues as misguided or even irresponsible. He continues to be a world leader in the study of immunosenescence, elucidating key aspects of why older people are so bad at fighting off infections, and I’m really looking forward to hearing his latest findings." says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Julie K. Andersen as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Dr. Andersen is Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, CA. Her current work focuses on basic age-related processes including cellular senescence and autophagy that underlie neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Her work has been featured in The Guardian and The Scientist as well as being cited in the News and Views section of the journal Science. Over the course of her 25 year academic career, Dr. Andersen has spoken at numerous national and international conferences, authored over 150 publications, and is the holder of several patents on novel therapeutics for age-related neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Andersen says that “only by understanding the mechanisms that underlie aging itself will we truly understand what drives these chronic diseases and be able to develop novel interventions”. "Julie has been associated with SENS since its earliest days: she participated in the first workshop that I organised to discuss it, in 2000, and she was a co-author on the first SENS paper in 2002. We’re delighted to be funding her laboratory at the Buck Institute to explore new ways of eliminating neurofibrillary tangles from neurons of Alzheimer’s sufferers, and at UA2019 we will hear about their initial progress." says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Joachim Lingner as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Dr. Lingner is full professor for life sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He obtained his PhD at the Biocenter of the University of Basel with Dr. Walter Keller. As a postdoc, he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Cech at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Lingner obtained the Friedrich Miescher Prize (2002), is elected EMBO member (2005) and ERC advanced investigator awardee (2008). Dr. Lingner’s work is aimed at obtaining mechanistic insights into the structure and function of human telomeres in health, cancer development and in aging. In his talk, Dr. Lingner will present new findings on the significant consequences that are caused by the oxidative damage of telomeres and cellular protection mechanisms that counteract this damage in order to enhance cellular lifespan. "Joachim has been a world leader in telomere research for over 20 years, and was responsible for some of the key early breakthroughs in understanding the role of this extremely unusual enzyme in compensating for the shortcomings (excuse the pun!) of other DNA polymerases. As we will hear at UA2019, he continues to provide groundbreaking new insights that contribute greatly to our progress in ensuring that telomeres and telomerase do what is good for us and not what is bad." says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Ruby Yanru Chen-Tsai, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Applied StemCell, Inc. as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Dr. Chen-Tsai received her PhD from Cornell University and did her post-doc research at Stanford University. She has been doing research in genome editing and stem cells over 20 years. Prior to joining ASC, Dr. Chen-Tsai worked at Stanford University for 16 years as the Director of Transgenic Research Center and Associate Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute, overseeing nine research technology labs. Her research at Stanford focused on using Parkinson patient-specific iPS cell lines and their differentiation to dopaminergic neurons as a disease model-in-a-dish. She is a co-inventor of the TARGATT™ integrase technology for site-specific gene insertion. Dr. Chen-Tsai is an author of many scientific papers and holder of over fifteen patents. Dr. Chen-Tsai is currently leading Applied StemCell's therapeutic pipeline with a strong focus on monogenic blood disorders that are characterized by high genetic penetrance. "Ruby, along with her company Applied Stem Cell, is one of the world’s most respected experts in gene editing. We are delighted to be working with her on our ambitious project to transform the potential of somatic gene therapy, in terms of both its safety from creating unwanted mutations and its efficacy in delivering large amounts of DNA, which is founded on some pioneering work at Stanford in which she was also heavily involved." says Aubrey de Grey. "Innovation has to be based on solid science.” says Ruby Chen-Tsai.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Professor Richard W. Barker as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Richard is an internationally respected leader in healthcare and life sciences. He says: "I’m focused on accelerating precision medicine technologies to advance our healthy lifespan". Professor Barker is Founding Director of New Medicine Partners, a global firm assisting public and private sector organisations to accelerate the worldwide development and adoption of precision medicine. He is chairman of the South London Health Innovation Network and of the corresponding Genomic Medicine Centre. He also chairs Kvatchii, a digital health company bringing cardiovascular health improvement to India and other middle income economies. He is a board member of Image Analysis, a UK company using MRI to quantify the impact of therapy on disease and of Celgene, a major US-based bio-therapeutics company. His 30-year business career in healthcare has spanned biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics and medical informatics – both in the USA and Europe. The senior roles he has held include: Director General of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, General Manager of Healthcare Solutions for IBM, Chief Executive of Chiron Diagnostics and head of McKinsey’s European healthcare practice. His book on the future of healthcare ‘2030 - The Future of Medicine: Avoiding a Medical Meltdown’ and his second book ‘Bioscience – lost in translation?’ are published by Oxford University Press. "Richard has long played a critical role in bridging several key divides between communities that have slowed progress in rejuvenation biotechnology: between researchers and clinicians, between gerontologists and other biologists, and also between scientists and policy-makers. His role as founding leader of Oxford’s Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovations was a shining example of this, and SENS Research Foundation were very proud to fund its first two PhD students." says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
The 2019 Undoing Aging Conference will again include poster sessions. In addition, a small number of posters will be selected for oral presentation. Poster topics should lie within the scope of the conference: Research contributing to the eventual postponement of age-related decline in health, with an emphasis on measures that repair damage rather than slowing its creation. Poster submissions are due on January 31, 2019. To submit your poster go to: https://www.undoing-aging.org/abstracts.html The Undoing Aging conference series is focused on the cellular and molecular repair of age-related damage as the basis of therapies to bring aging under full medical control. The series, a joint effort of SENS Research Foundation and Forever Healthy Foundation, provides a platform for the existing scientific community that already works on damage repair and, at the same time, offers interested scientists and students a first-hand understanding of the current state of this exciting new field of biomedical research. The conference sessions will cover a range of topics across the damage-repair spectrum including speakers from SENS Research Foundation, Oxford University, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Stanford University, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. All details, including regular speaker announcements, can be found at www.undoing-aging.org. Conference Early Bird pricing remains in effect until January 24, 2019.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Judith Campisi as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Judith Campisi says: "Aging research has entered an era of unprecedented hope for interventions that can prevent, delay and, in some cases, reverse much of the functional decline that is a hallmark of aging. There is still a lot of research to be done! I am delighted to be among the speakers at Undoing Aging 2019, where I will discuss the opportunities and challenges of our recent research." Judith Campisi received a PhD from the State University of New York, and postdoctoral training at the Harvard Medical School. She was on the Boston University Medical School faculty before joining the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1991. In 2002, she started a second laboratory at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. At both institutions, she established a broad program to understand the relationship between aging and disease, with an emphasis on cancer and aging. Her laboratory made pioneering discoveries in these areas, and she received numerous awards for her research. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and serves on numerous editorial and scientific advisory boards. “Judy has been a towering figure in the field of senescent cells for decades; among other things she pioneered the idea that senescent cells could be actively toxic to their environment and the discovery that cell senescence has a beneficial physiological role in wound healing. She was also one of the first senior gerontologists to appreciate the merits of the SENS approach when I first proposed it in 2000, and her support for it and us ever since has been of incalculable benefit in helping it achieve the mainstream status it enjoys today.” says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
After the incredible success of the 2018 Undoing Aging Conference earlier this year, we are getting closer to Undoing Aging 2019 and are looking forward to another brilliant get together in March 2019 with scientists from around the globe, who are leading the charge in maintaining and restoring full health in old age. Today we are happy to begin introducing the speakers for Undoing Aging 2019, starting with Dr. Jerry Shay. Jerry W. Shay is the Vice Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He is also the Associate Director of the Harold Simmon's NCI Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, and holds the Southland Corporation Distinguished Chair in Geriatrics Research. He holds the title of Distinguish Teaching Professor. In 2012 he was awarded a University of Texas Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award, in 2013 the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation Professor Award and in 2015 the Distinguished Basic Science Educator Award. Dr. Shay’s seminal work on the relationships of telomeres and telomerase to aging and cancer is well recognized. Dr. Shay received the AlliedSignal Award, the Ted Nash Foundation Award, the American Association of Aging Hayflick Award, an Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar Award, and in 2017 Dr. Shay received the Eunice Kennedy Shriver NIH Alliance Pioneer Award. Mountain View, California / Berlin, Germany After the incredible success of the 2018 Undoing Aging Conference with 350 participants from 36 countries and over 40 brilliant speakers, SENS Research Foundation (SRF) and Forever Healthy Foundation (FHF) are pleased to announce that Undoing Aging 2019 will take place in Berlin at the Umspannwerk Alexanderplatz from March, 28 to 30. The conference series Undoing Aging is focused on the cellular and molecular repair of age-related damage as the basis of therapies to bring aging under full medical control. Undoing Aging 2019 will once again bring together scientists from around the globe, all pioneers in their respective fields, who are leading the charge in maintaining and restoring full health in old age. Undoing Aging 2019 is not only open to the scientific community, but welcomes all interested members of the broader rejuvenation movement. The conference will feature a student poster session showing the work of innovative undergraduate and graduate students in the field of damage repair. "Undoing Aging 2018 was a triumphant success, with SENS Research Foundation and Forever Healthy Foundation combining to bring rejuvenation biotechnology meetings to Europe with a bang. I am overjoyed that Michael Greve and his team have decided to make these conferences an annual event; the quality and quantity of current research in this field amply justifies the transition from the biannual schedule that I pursued in Cambridge last decade. I’m looking forward to helping make UA2019 every bit as memorable as its predecessor", said Dr. Aubrey de Grey, CSO of SENS Research Foundation. "Forever Healthy is a vanguard supporter of SRF research programs and rejuvenation biotechnology start-ups. We are very excited to work with SRF on Undoing Aging," stated Michael Greve, founder, and CEO of the Forever Healthy Foundation. "Forever Healthy has two key goals for this conference: To support the remarkable scientific community already working on repair of age-related damage and to create an unique opportunity for the broader scientific world to experience that the possibility of bringing aging under complete, genuine medical control is realistic, achievable, and, indeed, beginning to happen.“  To register for Undoing Aging 2019 and to learn more about the conference, please visit undoing-aging.org About SENS Research Foundation SENS Research Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works to research, develop and promote comprehensive regenerative medicine solutions for the diseases of aging. SRF is focused on a damage repair paradigm for treating the diseases of aging, which it advances through scientific research, advocacy, and education. SENS Research Foundation supports research projects at universities and institutes around the world with the goal of curing such age-related diseases as heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. Educating the public and training researchers to support a growing regenerative medicine field are also major endeavors of the organization that are being accomplished through advocacy campaigns and educational programs. For more information, please visit sens.org About Forever Healthy Foundation The Forever Healthy Foundation is a private non-profit initiative whose mission is to enable people to vastly extend their healthy lifespans and be part of the first generation to cure aging. To accelerate the development of therapies to get aging under full medical control, the Forever Healthy Foundation directly funds cutting-edge research aimed at the molecular and cellular repair of damage caused by the aging process and supports the creation of startups turning that research into therapies for human application. For more information, please visit forever-healthy.org Mountain View, California / Berlin, Germany Due to the incredible success of the 2018 Undoing Aging Conference in Berlin, Germany, SENS Research Foundation (SRF) and Forever Healthy Foundation (FHF) are pleased to announce that Undoing Aging will return in 2019. This will be an annual conference series, co-sponsored by SRF and FHF to promote awareness of age-related disease and the ongoing scientific breakthroughs in rejuvenation biotechnology. Undoing Aging 2019 will once again focus on bringing together scientists from around the globe in their respective fields who are leading the charge in combating age-related disease. It is through the collaborative efforts of these scientists, investors, policy makers, and media that we will continue to expand the rejuvenation biotechnology industry and reimagine aging. Many thanks to all of the brilliant speakers and 350 participants from 36 countries world-wide who attended this year, without whom this event could not have been such a resounding success. We look forward to an even greater event in 2019!   Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
SENS Research Foundation (SRF) and Forever Healthy Foundation (FH) have announced a Forever Healthy Foundation Fellowship, sending out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for interested Post-Docs in the Rejuvenation Biotechnology space. The Fellowship will be carried out at the SRF Research Center in Mountain View, California. Applications are requested that promise progress over the course of the 3-year Fellowship in any area of Rejuvenation Biotechnology – defined as the application of the principles of regenerative medicine for the prevention and reversal of age-related disease. Degenerative aging is a consequence of the progressive accumulation of damage to tissue cellular and molecular structures over time; specific diseases of aging emerge when the cumulative burden of such damage in a particular tissue exceeds the minimum required to sustain its core biological functions. “Rejuvenation biotechnology began as a concept that few researchers understood, so our extramural research was necessarily guided by our own assessment of other researchers’ suitability, rather than by researchers coming to us with proposals. This RFP is a demonstration that that is no longer so: rejuvenation biotech has now become an established biomedical research paradigm”, explains Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer of SRF. This Fellowship has been made possible through the generous support of the Forever Healthy Foundation, a private nonprofit initiative whose mission is to enable people to vastly extend their healthy lifespans and be part of the first generation to cure aging. In order to accelerate the development of therapies to bring aging under full medical control, the Forever Healthy Foundation directly supports cutting-edge research aimed at the molecular and cellular repair of damage caused by the aging process. Additional information and requirements for application can be found at: www.sens.org/2018-RFP  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
Jeanne F. Loring, a Professor and the founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, will be speaking at the Undoing Aging 2018 Conference. Her laboratory studies human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), the remarkable cells that can make every cell type in the body. She is developing a patient-specific cell replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease and a stem cell-based treatment for multiple sclerosis and studying the underlying causes of autism. With the San Diego Zoo, her lab is developing a "zoo" of induced pluripotent stem cells from endangered species to aid in their conservation. Dr. Loring serves on many scientific and bioethics advisory boards and is frequently quoted in major newspapers, appears on television and in documentary features, and gives many public lectures about science and society. She is particularly concerned with the dangers of unregulated stem cell treatments in the US and other countries (“stem cell tourism”). Dr. Loring says the UA2018 conference “is a great opportunity to share strategies for healthy aging with a diverse group of scientists and thought-leaders.”  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Anthony Atala as a speaker for the 2018 Undoing Aging Conference. Dr. Atala is the Director of Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine and the Editor-in-Chief of Stem Cells-Translational Medicine and Current Stem Cell Research and Therapy. He is a practicing surgeon and a researcher in the area of regenerative medicine; his current work focuses on growing new human cells, tissues and organs. In 2011 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and was featured in U.S. News & World Report as one of 14 Pioneers of Medical Progress in the 21st Century. Over 14 applications of technologies developed in his laboratory have been used clinically. He is the editor of 20 books, has published over 500 journal articles, and has applied for or received over 200 national and international patents. At UA2018, Dr. Atala will be speaking on the use of 3D bioprinting applications within regenerative medicine. “Because of its precision, 3D bioprinting offers the potential to standardize the production of tissue engineered products and make them available to more patients,” Dr. Atala states.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Michael West as a speaker for the 2018 Undoing Aging Conference. Michael D. West, Ph.D. has devoted his entire career to unraveling the mystery of the biological clock: from his scientific training with a focus on the biology of cellular aging, to his founding of Geron (short for Gerontology), to helming other successful biotechnology companies with a focus on immortal “pluripotent” cellular therapies, to authoring a popular book on human aging. AgeX and its clinical programs represent the culmination of his nearly three decades of research and development into the aging process. Dr. West has served as co-CEO of AgeX parent company, BioTime, Inc. (NYSE MKT: BTX) since 2015, and before that as CEO, starting in 2007. From 1998 to 2007, Dr. West served as CEO, President, and Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology, which, as Ocata Therapeutics, was acquired by Astellas Pharma of Japan in early 2016. In 1990 Dr. West founded Geron Corp. (Nasdaq: GERN), which was probably the first regenerative medicine startup, with backing from venture capital firms from Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Venrock and others. For the company’s scientific team he recruited Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak, who collectively went on to win the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and for its scientific and clinical advisory board he recruited Nobel Laureates Carol Greider and James Watson, as well as Leonard Hayflick and others. While at Geron Dr. West also created the research consortium with Drs. James Thomson and John Gearhart that led to the first isolation of human embryonic stem cells. Dr. West has been a member of BioTime’s Board of Directors since 2002, is a Director of Asterias Biotherapeutics (NYSE MKT: AST) and was a Director of OncoCyte Corp (NYSE MKT: OCX) from 2013 to 2016. Dr. West received a B.S. Degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1976, an M.S. in Biology from Andrews University in 1982, and a Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in 1989 concentrating on the biology of cellular aging. He is the author of The Immortal Cell: One Scientist’s Quest to Solve the Mystery of Human Aging (DoubleDay, 2003), as well as numerous papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. |