Drugs that target aging directly, rather than individual age-associated diseases, will fundamentally transform healthcare. In the past couple years the biotech world has seen a huge investment boom in startups focused on extending healthy lifespan, driven by new understandings of the biological mechanisms of aging.
Please join us for a panel discussion and reception to explore recent advances in the biology of aging and perspectives on future translational and therapeutic applications.
Kristen Fortney is the founder and CEO of BIOAGE, a biotechnology startup that discovers and develops proprietary drugs to treat aging and associated diseases. Kristen received her PhD from the University of Toronto, followed by postdoctoral training at Stanford University where she was a fellow of the American Federation for Aging Research. She has over 10 years of experience developing novel bioinformatics approaches for data-driven investigation into the mechanisms of aging and age-related disease, with 20 published papers spanning computational drug discovery, biomarkers of aging, and the genetics of exceptional human longevity, and she is a past recipient of the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging.
Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures. An original super angel turned multi-stage investor, he has been named to the Forbes Midas List for the past five years (2014-2018) and was also named to the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists list for the past three years (2016-2018).
His recent focus areas include consumerization of enterprise, next gen financial services, AI, mental health, and longevity. He is well-known as an early backer of a number of iconic companies including Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), Rovio (HEL:ROVIO), Adyen (AMS: ADYEN), Pluralsight (NASDAQ:PS), Credit Karma, Greenhouse, Guideline, and Vicarious.
Laura Deming is the founding partner at the Longevity Fund, the first VC firm dedicated to funding high-potential longevity companies.
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She has backed companies including Unity Biotechnology, Precision Biosciences, Metacrine, Navitor, and Alexo Therapeutics.
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Prior to Longevity, Laura was accepted to MIT at the age of 14 to study physics and then dropped out to join the Thiel Fellowship and start The Longevity Fund.
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Laura most recently founded Age1, a four-month startup accelerator program focused on founders creating longevity companies.
Dr. Melov is a professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the co-director of the Mouse Phenotyping and Single-Cell Biology cores. An Australian, Dr. Melov obtained his bachelor’s degree in human genetics from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and then completed his PhD in biochemistry at Imperial College London. He carried out postdoctoral studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and at Emory University. Dr. Melov has published more than 100 papers and has twice received the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging. He has a life long interest in aging and longevity research (from the age of 8), and was the number three hire on the faculty at the Buck Institute. He is also CEO of a new startup focused on lifespan and health span extension in the elderly - Gerostate Alpha, which is currently incubating at the Buck Institute.