Presenters
Joe Betts-LaCroix, CEO of Retro.bio
Joe Betts-LaCroix began as a scientist at Harvard, MIT, and Caltech. He was part of a three-person team at Caltech that first elucidated the factors governing electron-tunneling rates in proteins, which is published in journals such as Science and JACS, with over 1000 citations so far. His first venture-funded startup, OQO, created the world’s smallest windows computer (Guinness world record 2006) with a team of 110 people, more than 100 patents, and over 10,000 units sold; and was sold to Google...
Karl Pfleger, AgingBiotech.info
Longevity Investor & Philanthropist. Founder, AgingBiotech.info. Karl Pfleger, PhD (Stanford CS, Machine Learning) now focuses on aging & longevity after a successful tech career (mySimon, Google). A long-time donor to the Buck Institute and SENS Foundation, he is also an angel investor who has backed over 15 aging-related startups. He is the creator of AgingBiotech.info, a free public resource to track the commercialization progress of the aging biotech sector and related information.
Alexandra Stolzing, Professor at University of Loughborough
Professor of Biogerontological Engineering Deputy Associate Dean (Enterprise) University Genetically Modified Organisms Officer. Research Interests: - stem cell aging & stem cell function in aging - interface of immunology and stem cell function - cellular pathology in age-related neurodegeneration & Alzheimer’s Disease - improving cryopreservation of cells & tissues - inducing pluripotency & partial reprogramming - improving stem cell function in vivo automated systems for cell & tissue production - quality control assays for aged cells delivery tools for cell-based therapies
Brad English, University of Bonn
PhD Student at Harvard Medical School. Since you ‘cannot change what you cannot measure’, Brad endeavors to bring accessible, affordable, and scientifically sound aging biomarkers to the general public. As a researcher, Brad investigates these age-associated changes — epigenetic methylation marks — looking for why they accompany such profound, unprecedented consequences, in both naturally aged tissue and reprogrammed cells.
Summary:
What is the most undervalued area for longevity progress we should pursue?
ECM Aging is vastly understudied and incredibly important. It is upstream of 6 hallmarks of aging, involved in major causes of death like cardiovascular disease and cancer, and plays a large part in looking and feeling old. There are no appropriate tools to measure and intervene.
Where are we today? Where would we like to be?
Short term – build connections between existing ECM and aging biologists. Medium term – build tools and prioritization. Long term – create interventions for ECM rejuvenation.
What public and private actions have the biggest impact on those goals?
We should fund ECM x Aging experts, create progress on an aging ECM platform, and build interventions on this platform to demonstrate rejuvenation.
What people, funding, resources, experiments would be required to test this hypothesis?
Create a SENS ECM workshop ($10k), a Biotech Connection Bay Area research project ($10k), propose an Impetus grant category for ECM, and improve the ECM node on the Longevity Tech Tree
