 Berlin / Mountain View, March 12 , 2020
To ensure the safety of our participants and their families and slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, Forever Healthy Foundation and SENS Research Foundation have rescheduled Undoing Aging 2020 to October, 21-23. We will issue ticket refunds to attendees, who cannot attend the new date. The Undoing Aging Conference in October will be focused on the cellular and molecular repair of age-related damage as the basis of therapies to bring aging under full medical control and will bring together scientists and startups from around the globe, all pioneers in their respective fields, who are leading the charge in maintaining and restoring full health in old age. To accommodate the exciting growth of the emerging rejuvenation biotechnology industry, Undoing Aging 2020 will add a dedicated forum and exhibition space for rejuvenation biotech companies to present themselves to prospective investors and industry partners. Additionally, the 2020 conference will add a special "Rejuvenation Now" session highlighting the first generation of human rejuvenation therapies that are either currently in clinical trials or are available today. Undoing Aging 2020 is not only open to the scientific community, but also welcomes startups, investors, the general media, and 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.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Vera Gorbunova as a speaker for the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference. Vera Gorbunova is an endowed Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester and a co-director of the Rochester Aging Research Center. Her research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of longevity and genome stability and on the studies of exceptionally long-lived mammals. Dr. Gorbunova earned her B.Sc. degrees at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and her Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Dr. Gorbunova pioneered comparative biology approach to study aging and identified rules that control evolution of tumor suppressor mechanisms depending on the species lifespan and body mass. Dr. Gorbunova also investigates the role of Sirtuin proteins in maintaining genome stability. Dr. Gorbunova identified high molecular weight hyaluronan as the key mediator of cancer-resistance in the naked mole rat. Recently she demonstrated that transposable elements contribute to aging process by driving age-related inflammation. Her work received awards of from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Glenn Foundation, American Federation for Aging Research, and from the National Institutes of Health. Her work was awarded the Cozzarelli Prize from PNAS, prize for research on aging from ADPS/Alianz, France, Prince Hitachi Prize in Comparative Oncology, Japan, and Davey prize from Wilmot Cancer Center. "Looking forward to learning about new exciting science and new interventions to undo aging", says Dr. Vera Gorbunova. “Vera has been at the forefront of biomedical gerontology for most of the time I’ve been in the field, and has pioneered a variety of advances in unusually diverse areas, ranging from the evolutionary biology of telomere maintenance to the anti-cancer potency of extracellular molecules. She always has something new and exciting to present, and I’m enormously looking forward to her talk”, says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. João Pedro de Magalhães as a speaker for the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference. Prof de Magalhaes graduated in Microbiology in 1999 from the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia in his hometown of Porto, Portugal, and then obtained his PhD in 2004 from the University of Namur in Belgium. Following a postdoc with genomics pioneer Prof George Church at Harvard Medical School, in 2008 Prof de Magalhaes was recruited to the University of Liverpool where he leads the Integrative Genomics of Ageing Group. His lab studies the ageing process and how we can manipulate it to fend off age-related diseases and improve human health. Prof de Magalhaes has authored over 100 publications and given over 100 invited talks, including three TEDx talks. In addition, he has a long-term interest in technological trends and their future impact on society. “I very much look forward to attending Undoing Aging 2020! The anti-ageing field has exploded in recent years, there is so much excitement that we will be able to tackle aging in the foreseeable future”, says Joao Pedro de Magalhaes. “I’ve been friends with Joao Pedro since he was a grad student, and his passion for this crusade has remained undiminished as he has risen to become one of the world's leading bioinformaticians in our community. His contributions are hugely admired within the field, and I’m very much looking forward to hearing about his latest work", says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Christian Schafmeister as a speaker for the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference. Christian Schafmeister, PhD is a Professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. His background is in biophysics, software engineering, and synthetic organic chemistry. As a graduate student, he constructed the first large unnatural protein 4HB1. In Christian's postdoctoral research, he co-invented "stapled peptides". As an independent researcher, Christian's group is developing a radical new approach to pioneering "bottom-up nanotechnology" - creating large, complex molecules to carry out complex molecular recognition and catalytic functions in the way that biological proteins do. Their approach is to synthesize stereochemically pure cyclic building blocks (bis-amino acids) that they couple through pairs of amide bonds to create spiro-ladder oligomers with programmed shapes (spiroligomers). These spiroligomers bind proteins and act as enzyme-like catalysts. Christian hold a B.S. from Simon Fraser University and Ph.D. from the University of California in San Fransisco. Christian Schafmeister says, “We are developing "therapeutic catalysts" - small, robust, non-immunogentic catalysts that will permeate the tight spaces within tissues and fix things. Our specific targets include reversing the unwanted cross-links that develop in the extracellular matrix with aging.”  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Jessica Tyler as a speaker for the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference. Jessica Tyler is a Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City, where she heads the Laboratory of Epigenetics and Genome Integrity. Her research focuses on the regulation of genomic processes by chromatin structure and mechanisms of replicative aging, using budding yeast as a model system for the aging of stem cells in humans. During her postdoctoral studies with Dr. James Kadonaga at the University of California, San Diego, she identified the key chromatin assembly factors Anti-silencing Function 1 (Asf1) and characterized Chromatin Assembly Factor 1 (CAF-1) from Drosophila. Dr. Tyler’s earlier work revealed that chromatin assembly and disassembly not only regulates S phase events, but also gene expression and the DNA damage response. Her finding that yeast lacking these chromatin assembly factors have altered lifespans led her to uncover that histone levels drastically decrease during aging, and is a cause of aging. Their lab has subsequently uncovered other changes that drive the aging process. Dr. Tyler was a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar and was awarded the Tenovus Medal and the Charlotte Friend Woman in Cancer Research Award from the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR). "We have to come together to figure out this aging problem, before we are too old", says Dr. Tyler. "Jessica’s work epitomises what we seek to do with these conferences: It brings together a wide range of strands of the molecular basis of age-related damage creation and accumulation, stretching across epigenetics, autophagy and cancer. I’m greatly looking forward to hearing her latest news!", says Aubrey de Grey. Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany (February 11, 2020) The Forever Healthy Foundation and SENS Research Foundation announced the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference program and speakers today. Undoing Aging will take place May 21 - 23, 2020 at the Radialsystem V in Berlin, Germany. Undoing Aging 2020 is focused on cellular and molecular repair of age-related damage as the basis of therapies to bring aging under full medical control. The conference is not only open to the scientific community, but also welcomes startups, investors, the general media, and all interested members of the broader rejuvenation movement. To accommodate the exciting growth of the emerging rejuvenation biotechnology industry, this year Undoing Aging will add a dedicated forum and exhibition space for rejuvenation biotech startups to present themselves to prospective investors and industry partners. Additionally, the conference will feature a special "Rejuvenation Now" session highlighting the first generation of human rejuvenation therapies that are either currently in clinical trials or are available today. The conference sessions will cover a range of topics across the damage-repair spectrum with talks from world-leading experts including:
Here are the full conference program and speaker list. Conference Early Bird pricing remains in effect until March 7, 2020.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Steve Horvath as a speaker for the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference. Steve is Professor at the Human Genetics and Biostatistics David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles , CA, USA Dr. Horvath's research lies at the intersection of aging research, epidemiology, chronic diseases, epigenetics, genetics, and systems biology. He works on all aspects of biomarker development with a particular focus on genomic biomarkers of aging. He developed a highly accurate multi-tissue biomarker of aging known as the epigenetic clock. Dr. Horvath developed systems biologic approaches such as weighted gene co-expression network analysis which lend themselves for integrating gene genomic data sets. These methods have been used for a broad spectrum of age related diseases including neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease. Dr. Horvath received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1995 and a Doctorate of Science in Biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2000. "We are living in exciting times. Several treatments appear to reverse epigenetic aging", says Dr. Horvath. “It’s a huge honor to welcome Steve to Berlin for Undoing Aging 2020. Steve was one of the first to develop an epigenetic clock of human aging, as a set of locations on our genomes whose proportion of methylation changes at a remarkably uniform rate with age. These clocks are potentially invaluable for allowing anti-aging therapies to be tested much more rapidly than is otherwise possible”, says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Tilman Grune as a speaker for the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference. Tilman Grune is Scientific Director of the German Institute of Human Nutrition and Full Professor of Molecular Toxicology at University of Potsdam. Studies of Medical Biochemistry in Moscow, Russia, Graduation at the Humboldt University Berlin (Charité), Germany, followed by post-doc positions in Berlin, Germany, and Albany (NY), US, several faculty positions in Berlin, Germany, and Düsseldorf, Germany, and a full professorship at the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. Prof. Dr. Grune is founding Editor-in-Chief of REDOX BIOLOGY, and on the Editorial Board of several journals, including Free Radic. Biol. Med., Aging Cell, PLOS one and Chairman of several European and national collaborative projects. His research is focused on the oxidative stress response of cells and the role of oxidative damage in aging. The oxidative damage to proteins, the protection of proteins from oxidation and the fate of a protein if it is oxidized are major research topics. Therefore, various proteases and proteolytic systems for the ability to recognize and degrade oxidized proteins are investigated. Dr. Grune's recent focus is on oxidation-related changes in the aging process. Model systems of aging senescent cells, as cardiomyocytes and ß-cells, are employed to investigate processes of protein oxidation, the removal of oxidized protein and effects of nutritional components on these processes. A central role in these investigations is the investigation of functional consequences of the formed age-related protein aggregates. Targeted prevention of aggregate formation and their removal are in his latest research focus. “Tilman has been a world leader in the study of incomplete proteolysis in aging for many years, and this is an area that we are eager to explore, following up on our successes in enhancing the elimination of small-molecule waste products in atherosclerosis and macular degeneration, which both led to the creation of spinout companies. I am greatly looking forward to hearing what he has to say”, says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Paul Robbins as a speaker for the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference. 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. He 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 345 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 185 book chapters and reviews with a H-index of 120, and i10-index of 434 and 48,344 citations and has edited four books. Dr. Robbins’ current research is focused on developing clinically relevant approaches to extend human healthspan. These approaches including the development of senotherapeutic drugs, able to specifically kill (senolytics) or suppress (senomorphics) the senescent cells that accumulate with age, and the identification of youthful factors secreted by adult stem cells. “Paul was scheduled to join us in Berlin last year but was waylaid at the last minute, so I’m delighted that he will be on our roster for 2020. His groundbreaking advances on the elimination of senescent cells and on the benefits conferred by stem cells are central to our “damage repair” approach to maintaining youthfulness in late life, and are inspiring researchers worldwide.”, says Aubrey de Grey.  Mountain View, CA / Berlin, Germany
We are happy to announce Dr. Nathaniel David as a speaker for the 2020 Undoing Aging Conference. Ned co-founded UNITY Biotechnology in 2011, largely because he thought it was “simply the coolest biology he had ever seen.” Before UNITY, Ned co-founded four other biotechnology companies that together raised over $1.5 billion in financing and today employ over 400 scientists, engineers, and business people. Ned builds companies because he sees company creation as a means to create technologies that change the world. Ned is a co-founder of Syrrx (acquired by Takeda), Achaogen (AKAO), Kythera Biopharmaceuticals (KYTH, acquired by Allergan), and Sapphire Energy. Ned holds pending and issued patents in fields such as nanovolume crystallography, antibiotic resistance, aesthetic medicine, and cellular senescence. He has served on the board of directors of Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, Sapphire Energy, and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and is a member of the board of trustees of the University of California Foundation. Ned was named one of the Top 100 innovators in the world under 35 by the MIT Technology Review. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Molecular and Cellular Biology and an A.B. in Biology from Harvard University. “As the founding CEO of one of the foremost companies in our field, Ned is a hugely important and influential contributor to hastening the defeat of aging. I’m delighted that he has agreed to join us in Berlin.” says Aubrey de Grey. April 2, 2019 Mountain View, California / Berlin, Germany After the incredible success of the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference, SENS Research Foundation and Forever Healthy Foundation are pleased to announce Undoing Aging 2020, which will take place on May 21 – 23. As UA2019 was sold out with nearly 500 participants from over 30 countries, Undoing Aging 2020 will be moving to a larger venue.  The Undoing Aging Conference is focused on the cellular and molecular repair of age-related damage as the basis of therapies to bring aging under full medical control. Among the 40 brilliant speakers at Undoing Aging 2019, there were giants in regenerative medicine such as: Dr. Nir Barzilai, Dr. Jerry Shay, Dr. Evan Snyder, Dr. Judith Campisi, and many more. Undoing Aging 2020 will once again bring together scientists and startups from around the globe, all pioneers in their respective fields, who are leading the charge in maintaining and restoring full health in old age. To accommodate the exciting growth of the emerging rejuvenation biotechnology industry, Undoing Aging 2020 will add a dedicated forum and exhibition space for rejuvenation biotech companies to present themselves to prospective investors and industry partners. Additionally, the 2020 conference will add a special "Rejuvenation Now" session highlighting the first generation of human rejuvenation therapies that are either currently in clinical trials or are available today. Undoing Aging 2020 is not only open to the scientific community, but also welcomes startups, investors, the general media, and 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. “The accelerating rate of progress in rejuvenation research is now unmistakeable at all levels: publications, transfer into rapidly-funded startup companies, and even into the clinic. One marker of this is the worldwide proliferation of conferences focused on it. But I have no doubt that Undoing Aging will maintain its pre-eminence among them, with its strong focus on the most cutting-edge science, its long history dating back to my first Cambridge conference in 2003, and above all its steadfast support from Forever Healthy.", said Dr. Aubrey de Grey, CSO of SENS Research Foundation. "We are very excited to work with SENS 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 and the rejuvenation biotechnology startups already working on repair of age-related damage and to create an unique opportunity to experience that bringing aging under complete, genuine medical control is realistic, achievable, and, indeed, beginning to happen.“  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. |
|
Looking for a career in rejuvenation?
Join the team @ Forever Healthy! |
Join our mailing list to stay updated on Undoing Aging
|