Scientist at @harvardmed and @WyssInstitute in @geochurch's lab | Working on solving aging

Joined October 2019
7 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
21 Dec 2023
Can we reverse aging? 7 yrs ago, Ocampo et al. showed that partial reprogramming can ameliorate aging hallmarks. But, OSKM induction has safety limitations & no new factors have emerged since. Here, biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/… we used 🧬 screens to find new rejuvenation factors🧵1/8
8
71
159
48,272
It’s been great working with @Harlan_Stevens1 on this! He showed that blood stem cell aging hallmarks trace to the fragility of specific regulatory networks. This and the recent AP1 work make you wonder… How much of aging is set by the wiring of a cell’s identity programs?
Entropy is random. Its effects on aging are not. Aging destabilizes the regulatory networks in blood stem cells🩸 But not every part breaks equally. The hallmarks of blood stem cell aging trace to one thing: fragile TF programs collapse with age, while stable ones expand. 🧵1/8
2
3
10
1,993
Alex Plesa retweeted
long-lived species and humans living 100 years are known to have increased DNA repair capacity but how DNA repair could be boosted to extend human lifespan is largely unknown our research in Nature Aging today proposes a target to enable such a boost: the DREAM complex
6
24
96
7,137
Alex Plesa retweeted
AI has transformed how we design therapeutics. But targeted delivery is still an expensive guessing game. Today @BobbyHollings and I are launching @deliverome with @beckypferdehirt and @radialscience at @AsteraInstitute, to fix that. 🧵
10
39
219
30,103
Aging is starting to look like an engineering problem
3
7
33
2,115
Alex Plesa retweeted
Some thoughts on why it's so hard to find a cure for aging — tarkhov.ae/age-time-reversal…
14
5
55
32,882
1/ How long do you want to live? For most of human history, aging was inevitable. It's now solvable. Apply for LBF8 cohort program: longbiofellowship dot org /THREAD🧵
26
85
284
166,915
Alex Plesa retweeted
I’m excited to launch the Longevity Biotech Atlas, a personal project mapping 700 organizations across the aging and longevity ecosystem. Longevity biotech is moving fast. A lot of the public narrative has centered on GLP-1s, peptides, biohacking, and consumer health optimization. But beneath that, a much deeper ecosystem is forming: companies, labs, investors, and non-profits working on core technologies that will enable fundamentally new forms of measurement and rejuvenation. The field is growing quickly, but it is still hard to answer basic questions: Who is building what? Which areas are crowded? Which technologies are underexplored? Where should founders, scientists, investors, and operators be paying attention? To help make the space easier to navigate, I synthesized public information on 700 organizations—ranging from therapeutics developers, diagnostics, investors, and more— into a single database. You can explore the atlas at the link in the comments. This is still an early version, and I’ll be adding more over time: new organizations, personal accounts, bookmarks, and better ways to track how the field is evolving. My hope is to build this out into a core tool for people trying to understand, build, fund, or work in longevity. If you’re interested in aging biology, biotech, investing, company formation, or the future of medicine, follow along. I’ll be sharing updates, maps of different subfields, and analyses of where the biggest opportunities and gaps may be. Let me know what you find useful!
30
41
336
22,747
Alex Plesa retweeted
Let’s stay at peak health without limits! 🧬 Vitalist Bay 2026 is T-30 days away in Berkeley, CA from May 14-17. Thanks to our partners, join this week & get: 🩸 Free @rythmhealth blood panel 🩻 Free @BodySpec DEXA scan Full program @ vitalistbay.com ( a unique benefit ↓)
12
47
113
43,080
Alex Plesa retweeted
for a while i've had a slight fear that the bluetooth from my airpods could be frying my brain this weekend i pulled the raw data from a $30m government study of 1,679 mice blasted with cell phone radiation and reanalyzed it what i found was...not what I expected? 🧵
402
703
9,233
4,529,543
Alex Plesa retweeted
A reminder that cellular rejuvenation ≠ organismal rejuvenation In mice, chemical reprogramming cocktails could be safely administered at lower dosages but with little benefits. At higher dosages, they became toxic and required euthanasia.
In Vivo Chemical Reprogramming Is Associated With a Toxic Accumulation of Lipid Droplets Hindering Rejuvenation onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…
6
13
67
4,545
Alex Plesa retweeted
🧵 Elon: “Longevity is an extremely solvable problem” At Vitalist Bay (May 14 - May 17), we’re solving it! 1K pioneers, 100 speakers, 50 workshops, 40 activities, 5 critical health tests Join us to spark dozens of SpaceXs for longevity!
363
897
9,089
6,863,209
Alex Plesa retweeted
How could tiny breakthroughs in aging science change U.S. GDP and population growth? What’s the economic value of making 41 the new 40, or 65 the new 60? How many lives could we create or save if we could slow reproductive or brain aging by just 1 year? What would billions of healthier hours be worth to the economy, if we assume no change in the age of retirement? I spent the last two years obsessing over the design, research, and execution of this project. The result is a book upcoming with Harvard University Press, a preprint, and—maybe your favorite part—an interactive simulation tool that lets you input your own timelines and assumptions for specific breakthroughs in aging bio, then see the ROI in terms of US population & GDP growth. From @RickEcon and Jason DeBacker—the economists who co-developed the open-source, macro model that made this project possible—to extensive comments by @tylercowen, @sapinker, Richard Freeman, @NDHendrix, @ebudish, @elidourado, @geochurch, @jasoncrawford as well as interviews with 102 scientists (!) and countless iterations with award-winning designer Giorgia Lupi and the @pentagram team, we built something we hope will be a benchmark for how scientists, economists, designers, philosophers, entrepreneurs and storytellers can come together to paint, fund, and build different flourishing futures for our species. I couldn’t be more excited to share this. It’s the start of an open and evolving project—the labor and product of love, obsession, and unrelenting care. I hope you have fun playing with our simulation tool — and if you do, please share!
66
171
956
1,104,602
Alex Plesa retweeted
Announcing our 2026 Fellows! One is a neuroscientist exploring how the brain computes at a molecular level, another is a bioengineer 3D-printing human tissue. There’s a PhD student working on computational protein design, and an engineer developing robots to build large structures in space – just to name a few of the badasses in our new Fellowship cohort! With this one-year program, we want to support early-career talents advancing important science and tech. We connect them with senior scientists, invite them to our technical workshops, seminars, and Vision Weekends alongside leaders in their fields, and offer platforms for sharing their work. We are incredibly excited to introduce our 2026 Fellows! Longevity Biotechnology • Alex Plesa, Scientist, Harvard University @amplesa • Donnacha Fitzgerald, Founder, Origenity @DN_Fitzgerald • Gianluca Cidonio, Assistant Professor, Sapienza University @gianlucacidonio • Jakub Lála, PhD Student, Imperial College London @jakublala • Léo Lopez, Staff Scientist, Tufts University • Nick Schaum, Postdoc & Co-Founder, University of Cambridge & Covalent.Bio Neurotechnology • Avery Krieger, Founder & CEO, Constellation Systems @Biofall • Constanze Albrecht, Graduate Student, MIT Media Lab • Elisa Kallioniemi, Assistant Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology • Max Kanwal, PhD Student, Stanford University • Sven Truckenbrodt, Group Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Secure AI • Huixin Zhan, Assistant Professor, New Mexico Tech • Keith Patarroyo, Research Fellow, University of Glasgow @KeithPatarroyo • Mateo Petel, Research Scientist, Stanford University • Tianyi Alex Qiu, Research Fellow, Oxford Human-Centered AI Lab @Tianyi_Alex_Qiu • Vivek Nair, CEO, Multifactor Nanotechnology • Alberto Privitera, Assistant Professor, University of Florence • Kathryn Shelley, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Washington • Konlin Shen, Research and Development Engineer, University of California San Francisco • Qiancheng Xiong, Senior Scientist, A*STAR Bioprocessing Technology Institute Space • Philip Linden, Space Systems Engineer, Planet Labs PBC • Sidh Sikka, Co-Founder, Manifold Research @SikkaSidh Existential Hope • Abigail Olvera, Research Director, Golden Gate Institute for AI @Abi0lvera • Fin Moorhouse, Researcher, Forethought @finmoorhouse • Mahlaqua Mila Noor, Viral Immunologist, University of Cambridge • Ninon Lizé Masclef, Research Affiliate, MIT Media Lab @ninon_lize • Peggy Yin, PhD Student, Stanford University • Ruairidh Battleday, AI Researchers & Founder, Thinking About Thinking @RMBattleday Learn more about our Fellowship: foresight.org/engage/fellows…
2
16
98
10,158
Alex Plesa retweeted
Our new paper is now online in @NatureBiotech. We use gRNA engineering, phage-assisted non-continuous evolution (PANCE), and protein language models to improve the precision of adenine base editing. @harvardmed @geochurch nature.com/articles/s41587-0…
6
46
233
23,710
Alex Plesa retweeted
20 Nov 2025
What's the most predictive biomarker of mortality? Epigenetic clocks get all the attention (thanks to @bryan_johnson and a certain Harvard professor), but they're NOT the most powerful way to predict future health, disease, or mortality. The answer comes from a different biological data type entirely.
2
8
27
2,923
Alex Plesa retweeted
Can you rejuvenate an old brain by giving it young immune cells? 🧠 My lab @calico put it to the test. In our new study, we replaced the brain's immune cells in old mice with young ones. The result? The old brain environment forced the young cells to age RAPIDLY. A 🧵👇
37
229
1,112
138,727
Alex Plesa retweeted
1/ Can we find more precise and even safer ways to rejuvenate vision? As a step towards this goal, I am excited to share this preprint of my 1st postdoc work from @JswLab with amazing collaborators, esp. @Bruce_Ksander! Using functional genomics, we discovered GSTA4 as a key OSK effector for oxidative resilience—overexpressing it alone rejuvenates RPE & restores vision. A breakdown👇biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
6
39
148
29,428
Alex Plesa retweeted
In the past thirty years, the number of deaths from cancer has dropped dramatically, resulting in millions of lives saved. Some of this is due to improvements in oncology treatments, including immunotherapy. But most of the effect has little to do with biopharma at all.
3
15
101
55,986
Alex Plesa retweeted
New paper @NatureRevCancer on the evolutionary interplay between ageing and cancer 🚨 These are overlapping yet also antagonistic processes. While cancer involves cell proliferation and growth, ageing often involves cellular degeneration and atrophy. Because natural selection prioritizes cancer resistance, I argue it ultimately shapes the evolution of ageing. As such, selective pressures that mitigate cancer risk in young animals contribute to late-life ageing phenotypes. Tumour suppression mechanisms, such as telomere shortening and cellular senescence, have long been argued as such antagonist mechanisms. However, I think there is a much deeper impact involving growth and developmental mechanisms, like hedgehog signalling, that are down regulated with age to reduce cancer risk yet later contribute to loss of stem cell function and tissue homeostasis. Also, given that many processes are antagonistic between cancer and ageing, some anti-ageing interventions could promote cancer, though I argue that this depends on the biological and evolutionary context of the targeted process. Cancer-ageing trade-offs are thus an important caveat when developing interventions targeting ageing processes and must be accounted for in translational geroscience. nature.com/articles/s41568-0…
7
21
107
17,798
🧵1/ LBF7 Spain is happening and we're doing something kinda wild: -We’re gathering the smartest people who want to SOLVE AGING -going to a longevity resort in the Spanish mountains -to learn, discuss and ACTUALLY BUILD stuff for 7 days straight Here’s what we’re cooking 👇
17
105
240
32,214