 Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Mike West as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Michael D. West, Ph.D. is the founder and CEO of AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. He received his Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in 1989 concentrating on the biology of cellular ageing. He has focused his academic and business career on the application of developmental biology to age-related degenerative disease. He was the founder and first CEO of Geron Corporation (Nasdaq: GERN), and from 1992 to 1998, he held various positions, including CEO, Director, and Vice President. From 1998 to 2007, Dr West held positions as CEO, President, and Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (ACT), which was eventually acquired by Astellas Pharma, Inc. From 2007 to 2018, he was CEO/Co-CEO of BioTime, Inc. (NYSE American: BTX). "We’ve left Mike to the last of these announcements, but he’s a prime example of “last but not least” - indeed, he is the only speaker we've invited who was also an invited speaker last year. That’s no accident: this exploding and immensely diverse field boasts a huge number of stellar researchers, such that I could happily fill the program without repetition even if the meeting lasted a week. But Mike is the ultimate pioneer in our field: he was the first rejuvenation researcher, by well over a decade, to make a success of taking early-stage work into the private sector. He’s still at the absolute forefront of this crusade, and I’m eager to learn what he has to say this year", says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Evan Snyder as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Evan Y. Snyder earned his M.D. and Ph.D. (in neuroscience) from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980 as a member of NIH's Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP). He had also studied psychology and linguistics at the University of Oxford. After moving to Boston, he completed residencies in pediatrics and neurology as well as a clinical fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at Children's Hospital-Boston, Harvard Medical School. In 1989, he became an attending physician in the Department of Pediatrics (Division of Newborn Medicine) and Department of Neurology at Children's Hospital-Boston, Harvard Medical School. From 1985-1991, he conducted postdoctoral research as a fellow in the Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School. In 1992, Dr. Snyder was appointed an instructor in neurology (neonatology) at Harvard Medical School and was promoted to assistant professor in 1996. In 2003, Dr. Snyder was recruited to Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute as Professor and Director of the Program in Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. He then inaugurated the Stem Cell Research Center (serving as its founding director) and initiated the Southern California Stem Cell Consortium. Dr. Snyder is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (FAAP). He also received training in Philosophy and Linguistics at Oxford University. "Evan needs no introduction to anyone who works in regenerative medicine; he has been at the pinnacle of that field for decades. I’ve been delighted that SENS Research Foundation has been able to work closely with him over the past few years, especially in the form of his annual hosting of some of our outstanding summer interns - he doesn’t even vet them himself any more, because he knows how stellar our recruits invariably are! I’m intensely proud to have such a titan of our field on the Undoing Aging program", says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Nir Barzilai, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Dr. Barzilai is a chaired Professor of Medicine and Genetics and Director of the biggest Center in the world to study the Biology of Aging. He is the recipient of an NIH Merit Award aiming to extend the healthy life span in rodents by biological interventions. He also studies families of centenarians that have provided genetic/biological insights on the protection against aging. Several drugs are developed based, in part, on these paradigm-changing studies. Dr. Barzilai is a recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the recipient of the 2010 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction in Aging Research and is the 2018 recipient of the IPSEN Longevity award. He is leading the TAME (Targeting/Taming Aging with Metformin) multi central study to prove that concept that multi morbidities of aging can be delayed in humans and change the FDA indications to allow for next generation interventions. He is a founder of CohBar Inc. (now public company) and Medical Advisor for Life Biosciences. "Nir is our keynote speaker this year because, quite honestly, if I’d only given him half an hour there is no way he could do justice to his role in our movement. His scientific contributions have been world-leading for decades, but in recent years he has done so much more: he has taken a prominent role in two important rejuvenation startups, and he has also employed his exceptional political skills in forging invaluable new understandings between the biomedical gerontology and regulatory communities. Plus, he’s almost as entertaining a speaker as me!", says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Nikolay Zak as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. "As I know well from my experience with the Methuselah Mouse Prizes a decade or more ago, the public’s fascination with world records is a valuable tool in the essential task of raising general interest in an otherwise seemingly dry scientific field. This is particularly exemplified by the fame of Jeanne Calment, who has been authoritatively validated to have died in 1997 at an age three years older than any other validated case. However, Zak’s just-published investigations have cast considerable doubt on Calment’s actual age at death, and lend credibility to the possibility of an identity switch with her daughter. He will provide the latest updates on this rapidly-evolving and immensely controversial research.", says Aubrey de Grey. Dr. Nikolay Zak studied obtained his Masters in Economics at New Economic School and his Ph.D. in Mathematics at Moscow State University. He is also a highly accomplished glassblower.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany We are happy to announce Dr. Laura Niedernhofer and Dr. Paul Robbins, University of Minnesota, as speakers for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Laura Niedernhofer, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Institute on the Biology of Aging & Metabolism (iBAM) at the University of Minnesota. Internationally recognized as an expert in the molecular and cellular basis of aging, Dr. Niedernhofer’s expertise is in how cellular senescence is regulated as well as the role of DNA repair during aging. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, Dr. Niedernhofer was at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida. She has trained at MIT, Duke, Vanderbilt and Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands. This year she was awarded a Glenn Award for Aging Research and the Vincent Cristofolo Rising Star Award in Aging Research from the American Federation for Aging Research.  Paul D. Robbins, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of the Medical Discovery Team on Aging and the Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism (iBAM) and Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Before moving to the University of Minnesota, Dr. Robbins was a Professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in Jupiter, Florida and Director of the TSRI Center on Aging. Previously he was a Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Director of Basic Research for the Molecular Medicine Institute and Co-Director of the Paul Wellstone Cooperative Muscular Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine as well as Interim Director of Molecular & Cellular Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
Paul received his B.A. from Haverford College, his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Mulligan at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT. He has co-authored over 340 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 185 book chapters and reviews with a H-index of 118 and has edited four books. Dr. Robbins’ current research is focused on developing therapeutic approaches, including gene therapy, small molecules and stem cells, to treat age-related diseases. "Paul and Laura have made huge contributions to the biomedical gerontology field in recent years. Their work focuses on the characterisation and alleviation of the aspects of aging that are driven by DNA damage. At UA2019, their talks will describe their recent advances in the mechanistic understanding of DNA damage, aided by spectacularly good mouse models, and also their identification of natural products with potent senolytic activity", says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Dongsheng Cai as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Dongsheng Cai, MD, PhD, is a professor in pharmacology and also holds Young Men Division endowed chair in physiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, USA. Dr. Cai received many awards and honors, for example, he is a recipient of Joseph A. Pignolo Award in Aging Research from University of Pennsylvania, Vincent Cristofalo Rising-Star Award from American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), and Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (Lilly Award) from The Obesity Society (TOS). The research in Dongsheng Cai’s lab focuses on studying the neural and hypothalamic mechanisms of metabolic syndrome and systemic aging. "Dongsheng’s fabulous work on the involvement of the hypothalamus in aging first came to my attention six years ago, as a result of a groundbreaking paper on the role of GnRH, and he spoke at the last Cambridge conference in 2013. His group’s research has since continued to make immense progress, including very recent advances, and I’m delighted that he has agreed to update us in Berlin." says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Ruth Itzhaki as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Dr. Itzhaki’s first degree was in physics, her second was an MSc in Biophysics - being awarded one of the only two studentships then available in that subject - and finally a PhD in Biophysics - all London University degrees. She then moved to Cambridge, to the Department of Radiotherapeutics, holding a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research and the Wheldale-Onslow Memorial Fellowship at Newnham College. One paper she published there became a "citation classic". Her next move was to Manchester where she worked initially in the Paterson Laboratories (cancer research), and subsequently in the University of Manchester. Her research topics have been diverse, most recently Alzheimer's disease, in particular, the role of viruses acting with a genetic factor in dementia, and the role of the genetic factor in determining outcome of infection by pathogens. For the virus work, she won an Investigator award from The Lancet, a Wellcome Trust Innovative award, two Olympus Foundation awards, an Alzheimer's Research Forum award and a Manchester City Council award. She is currently an emeritus professor at Manchester University, living in Oxford, where she has held an honorary senior research fellowship at the university of Oxford for the last 4 years. "Ruth is a shining example of one of the qualities I most admire in a scientist: dogged perseverance in pursuit of one’s thesis, in spite of near-universal rejection of it by the mainstream community, until one finally wins them round. It’s only an admirable quality if you’re likely to be right, of course, so you’d better be a really good scientist in other ways too - and she sure is. Ruth spoke at a couple of my Cambridge conferences and I was always dismayed that such solid data and logic concerning the involvement of herpes simplex virus in Alzheimer’s disease was so widely ignored or dismissed for what seemed to be totally flimsy reasons. That’s not happening any more!", says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Mikhail S. Shchepinov as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference. Mikhail S. Shchepinov is Chief Science Officer at Retrotope, Inc. USA. From 2000 to 2006 Mikhail worked in the biotech industry developing chemical tools for genomics and proteomics. His current focus is on developing methods of fortification of essential nutrients to protect against diseases of aging and age-related oxidative stress. Dr. Mikhail Shchepinov received a MS in chemistry and biotechnology from Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology, Moscow, USSR and a PhD in bioorganic chemistry from the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry. "Mikhail (Misha) first approached me nearly 15 years ago with the totally crazy idea that replacing hydrogen with deuterium in bioactive molecules so as to slow down undesirable chemical reactions. Well, if ever there were a proof that some of the craziest ideas are actually right, it is this one. In the years since, Misha and his company Retrotope have taken this concept from chemistry to yeast to mice and all the way to highly promising clinical results for several hitherto untreatable orphan diseases. I’m looking forward to hearing the latest!" says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA/Berlin, Germany
The SENS Research Foundation and the Forever Healthy Foundation today announced the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference program and speakers. Undoing Aging will take place March 28 - 30, 2019 at the Umspannwerk Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany. Undoing Aging 2019 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 conference, a joint effort of SENS Research Foundation and Forever Healthy Foundation, will again focus on bringing together scientists and startups from around the globe in their respective fields, who are leading the charge in maintaining and restoring full health in old age. The conference sessions will cover a range of topics across the damage-repair spectrum including these highlights:
The full conference program and speaker list can be found at our website 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. 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. |