Michael Ringel is the Chief Operating Officer of Life Biosciences, a biotechnology company pioneering cellular rejuvenation therapies to reverse and prevent multiple diseases of aging. Michael became COO of Life just a few months ago, but he's been advising the company since 2018. Prior to this year, he was managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where over a 25-year career he focused on R&D and innovation initiatives across the private sector and government. H...
Jun 04, 2025•38 min•Ep. 58
Dr. Janine Sengstack is the Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Junevity, a company created in 2023 with the mission of extending health span and lifespan through what they term "Cell Reset therapeutics." The company recently secured $10 million in seed funding. In this episode, Chris and Janine explore the innovative platform Janine developed during her PhD work in Hao Li's lab at UCSF, which now forms the foundation of Junevity's therapeutic approach. They discuss how the company uses c...
Apr 02, 2025•37 min•Ep. 57
Dr. Andrew Brack, Program Manager at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), discusses PROSPR (Proactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience), an ambitious new program aimed at extending human healthspan. In this wide-ranging conversation, Chris and Andrew explore how PROSPR plans to accelerate the development of therapies that target aging itself by building the regulatory and scientific infrastructure needed to measure and improve health during aging. They discuss PROSPR's i...
Jan 09, 2025•40 min•Ep. 56
Markus Gstöttner is the CEO of Clock.bio, a company devoted to extending and improving the quality of life by reversing the harmful effects of time in our cells. In this episode, Gstöttner shares how his company is working to extend healthspan by understanding and harnessing the natural rejuvenation capabilities of stem cells. The conversation explores Clock.bio's groundbreaking approach to identifying the genes and pathways involved in cellular rejuvenation, and their vision for translating the...
Nov 20, 2024•27 min•Ep. 55
Adam Freund (CEO) and Remi Laberge (CTO) are the founders of Arda Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing novel therapies that selectively eliminate harmful cell populations driving chronic diseases. In this episode, they discuss their innovative approach to treating conditions like idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis by identifying and removing specific cell types that cause tissue damage, rather than trying to modify cellular behavior through traditional drug approaches. The Finer Details: ...
Oct 30, 2024•46 min•Ep. 54
Alex Aravanis is the CEO and co-founder of Moonwalk Biosciences, a biotechnology company pioneering precision epigenetic medicines. In this episode, Chris and Alex discuss Moonwalk's innovative approach to developing a new class of medicines aimed at treating complex diseases and potentially extending human healthspan. The Finer Details: The concept of epigenetics as the "source code" for cell states Moonwalk's technology for analyzing and modifying the epigenome The company's focus on cardiomet...
Oct 09, 2024•42 min•Ep. 53
In this episode, Chris Patil speaks with Dr. Mehmood Khan, CEO of Hevolution Foundation, about the organization's mission to extend healthy human lifespan and better understand the aging process. Dr. Khan discusses Hevolution's unique approach to funding global scientific discovery and investing in private companies dedicated to advancing aging science. He shares insights into the challenges and opportunities in the field of longevity research, the importance of global collaboration, and the pot...
Jul 17, 2024•43 min•Ep. 52
Hans Keirstead, PhD, is the Chairman of the Board at Immunis, a biotechnology company researching and developing immune secretome products to address age-driven immune deficits. In this episode, Chris and Hans discuss Immunis' approach to targeting the aging immune system as a key driver of age-related disease. They explore the potential of immune secretome factors to restore youthful immune function, the promising results from Immunis' preclinical and early clinical studies, and the future of i...
May 08, 2024•48 min•Ep. 51
Dr. Daisy Robinton, co-founder and CEO of Oviva Therapeutics, discusses the company's innovative approach to improving women's healthspan by targeting the biology of ovarian aging. Motivated by her personal experiences and the realization that female physiology is underserved by research and medicine, Daisy outlines how menopause is a key inflection point in the acceleration of aging in women. She explains the central role of anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) in regulating ovarian function and fertil...
Apr 03, 2024•37 min•Ep. 50
Dr. Noah Davidsohn, co-founder and CSO of Rejuvenate Bio, discusses the company's innovative work using gene therapies to treat age-related diseases in dogs and humans. In his conversation with host Chris Patil, he explains his recent groundbreaking study showing that partial cellular reprogramming with Yamanaka factors extended lifespan and healthspan in very old mice. Noah then outlines Rejuvenate's clinical pipeline, including targeting longevity pathways like FGF-21 for heart disease and com...
Mar 20, 2024•35 min•Ep. 49
30 Years of Aging Biology: A Pioneer’s Perspective (Cynthia Kenyon - VP Aging Biology, Calico Labs) Dr. Cynthia Kenyon reflects on the evolution of the longevity field over the 30 years since the publication of her groundbreaking paper, “A C. elegans mutant that lives twice as long as wild type,” a genetic analysis of one of the first single-gene mutations to extend lifespan in the worm. She recounts the initial excitement and skepticism around the idea of a pathway that regulates aging, and sub...
Dec 06, 2023•44 min•Ep. 48
Dr. Jamie Justice is Executive Director of the newly launched XPRIZE Healthspan, a $101 M international competition to accelerate therapeutics targeting aging biology. In conversation with host Chris Patil, Dr. Justice outlines the motivation, structure, and timeline of the prize, as well as how teams can get involved. She also explains unique aspects of this prize, including the public commentary period, how existing trials can be adapted for competition, functional endpoints, and judging crite...
Nov 29, 2023•55 min•Ep. 47
Dr. Coleen Murphy is a prominent aging researcher and author of the upcoming book “How We Age: The Science of Longevity” from Princeton University Press. In this wide-ranging discussion, Coleen provides insights into her motivation for writing this book, key topics covered, and her unique perspective on the field. Key ideas: Addressing ethical concerns about studying aging and longevity Defining aging conceptually and how metrics like lifespan vs. healthspan are measured Using genetics, transcri...
Nov 01, 2023•37 min•Ep. 46
Dr. Nicholas Hertz is the co-founder and former CSO of Mitokinin, a biotech company developing therapies targeting damaged mitochondria in neurodegenerative disease. Mitokinin was recently acquired by pharmaceutical giant AbbVie. In this episode, Nick recounts the journey from academic research on PINK1 biology to founding a startup and advancing a clinical candidate. He provides insights into the drug discovery process, optimizing lead compounds, translating basic findings into therapies, and p...
Oct 11, 2023•42 min•Ep. 45
Dr. Alex Colville is the co-founder and General Partner of Age1 Ventures, a recently launched VC firm focused on funding contrarian, founder-led biotech companies aiming to extend healthy human lifespan. In this episode, Alex outlines Age1's thesis of identifying and empowering talented founders with ambitious visions for the longevity field. He shares his own journey to VC, including early interests in aging science and entrepreneurship. Alex provides an inside look at Age1's approach to commun...
Sep 27, 2023•41 min•Ep. 44
Dr. Carolina Reis Oliveira and Dr. Alessandra Zonari are the co-founders of OneSkin, a company developing science-backed skincare products to reverse skin aging at the cellular level. In this episode, Carolina and Alessandra tell host Dr. Chris Patil how OneSkin is leveraging recent advances in longevity science to create novel peptides that target senescent cells and inflammation in aged skin. Their lead ingredient, OS-1, is a peptide capable of reducing biological age and senescence burden in ...
Aug 23, 2023•36 min•Ep. 43
Dr. Felix Wong is a co-founder of Integrated Biosciences, an early-stage biotech company developing next-generation therapeutics for cellular rejuvenation. He is also a postdoc at MIT and the Broad Institute and was a lead author on a recent Nature Aging paper describing the use of graph neural networks to discover new senolytic compounds. In this episode, Felix and host Chris Patil have an in-depth discussion about using machine learning to accelerate drug discovery, specifically to target cell...
Aug 09, 2023•37 min•Ep. 42
Joan Mannick, CEO and co-Founder of Tornado Therapeutics, joins the podcast to discuss her company’s exciting mission of developing a new generation of rapalog compounds specifically targeting the TORC1 complex. Rapalogs are analogs of the natural compound rapamycin, which has been shown to extend lifespan and healthspan in animal models by inhibiting the TOR pathway. However, rapamycin has limitations that have prevented its widespread clinical use for aging-related conditions. Tornado aims to ...
Jul 26, 2023•29 min•Ep. 41
Mitchell Lee is the CEO and co-founder of Ora Biomedical, a Seattle-based biotech company using large-scale phenotypic drug screening in C. elegans to discover small molecule therapeutics that extend lifespan and healthspan. In this episode, Chris and Mitch discuss Ora's approach to drug discovery, which focuses on function and phenotype rather than specific targets or mechanisms. Using their proprietary "WormBot" platform, Ora screens thousands of compounds in parallel to identify molecules tha...
Jul 12, 2023•32 min•Ep. 40
This special episode features a panel discussion moderated by Chris Patil at the 2023 SynBioBeta conference. The panel brings together leaders from the synthetic biology and longevity communities to explore opportunities for collaboration and cross-pollination between these fields. Panelists discuss the talent bottleneck in longevity research, challenges in translating new discoveries into therapies, the need for improved communication and education, and a shared vision for transforming health a...
May 31, 2023•43 min•Ep. 39
In this episode of Translating Aging, host Chris Patil is joined by Dr. Courtney Hudson-Paz, the Founder and Program Director of the Time Initiative, an organization whose mission is to build a network of undergraduate leaders in aging biology. Courtney takes us on a journey into the world of aging biology and the mission of the Time Initiative, highlighting how this groundbreaking organization is cultivating the next generation of leaders. She shares her insights into the importance of early en...
May 17, 2023•23 min•Ep. 38
Jacob Kimball is the Head of Research and co-founder of NewLimit, a company aiming to develop epigenetic reprogramming therapies to treat age-related diseases and extend human healthspan. In this episode, Chris and Jacob have an in-depth discussion about NewLimit’s mission and approach. They explore how NewLimit is leveraging epigenetics and machine learning to search for new ways to reverse cell aging without changing cell identity. NewLimit is systematically testing combinations of biological ...
May 03, 2023•40 min•Ep. 37
In today’s episode, Chris is joined by Dr. Matthew "Oki" O'Connor, CEO for Scientific Affairs at Cyclarity Therapeutics, a company focused on eliminating arterial plaque, a prevalent issue in old age. Dr. O'Connor shares his insights on the causes and effects of atherosclerosis, the leading cause of death worldwide, and how aging contributes to plaque build-up. The podcast emphasizes the need for a paradigm shift in addressing cardiovascular disease and highlights the importance of new approache...
Mar 15, 2023•38 min•Ep. 36
Dr. Marco Quarta, CEO and Co-founder of Rubedo Life Sciences, joins Chris on today’s episode to discuss his company’s strategy of targeting pathologic cells to develop therapeutics for chronic degenerative conditions. The conversation covers the evolving definition of senescence and the challenges of identifying and classifying pathologic cells, which vary across different tissues and indications. Marco also announces the upcoming Senotherapeutic Summit in November, which will bring together sta...
Feb 22, 2023•41 min•Ep. 35
In today’s episode, Chris sits down with Kevin Caldwell, CEO, Co-Founder, and President of Ossium Health, a company that aims to improve human health and longevity through bioengineering - specifically using stem cell science to create materials for cell therapies. Together, they discuss Ossium’s approach: processing and banking of bone marrow from organ donors, which can then be cryopreserved and used for various clinical applications such as bone marrow transplants for blood cancer patients an...
Jan 25, 2023•41 min•Ep. 34
This week, we welcomes Peter Fedichev, an entrepreneur and scientist with over 20 years of experience in academic research and biotech business who has co-founded three biotech companies. He’s currently the co-founder & CEO of GERO, a longevity startup on a mission to hack aging. In this episode, Chris and Peter discuss GERO’s goal to accelerate our understanding of aging and create a therapy that will significantly extend a healthy human lifespan. First, they talk about the relationship bet...
Dec 14, 2022•41 min•Ep. 33
This week, Chris welcomes Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen, who’s on a mission to understand, modulate and treat aging and age-related diseases. His research group, The Scheibye-Knudsen Lab, is trying to understand the cellular and organismal consequences of DNA damage & repair with the aim of developing interventions for aging. Morten is also one of the chairs and chief organizers of the highly successful aging research and Drug Discovery conferen...
Nov 16, 2022•33 min•Ep. 32
Optimizing Healthspan through Longevity Medicine (Dr. Andrea Maier – The Center for Healthy Longevity) Dr. Andrea Maier is an internal medicine specialist, geriatrician, and researcher whose work focuses on age-related disease, cellular senescence, and the translation of longevity science into clinical practice. Among her academic appointments are professorships at the Free University, Amsterdam and the Netherlands, the University of Melbourne in Australia, and the National University of Singapo...
Oct 12, 2022•37 min•Ep. 31
In today’s episode, Chris welcomes Sebastian Brunemeier, a biotech VC and company builder focused on longevity and regenerative medicine. Sebastien is the Co-Founder and General Partner of Healthspan Capital, a longevity VC firm that invests in biotechnology startups developing therapies to slow or reverse aging, and the CEO and Co-Founder of ImmuneAGE Pharma, a new company based on a drug discovery platform for immune rejuvenation. At Healthspan Capital, Sebastian is looking to invest in fellow...
Sep 28, 2022•44 min•Ep. 30
Joining Chris on the podcast today is Nils Regge, Co-founder and Managing Director of Apollo Health Ventures. As a social entrepreneur, company creator, and biotech expert, Nils built Apollo Health Ventures in 2016 to help health tech companies develop methods to prevent and reverse the aging process and extend the healthy human life span. At Apollo, Nils makes use of his dealmaking skills, business knowledge, and prior experience growing startups to help boost the success of biotech and health ...
Sep 14, 2022•27 min•Ep. 29