Alex Zhavoronkov, PHD
A QUEST FOR AGING WITHOUT LOSING and Continuous improvement
The Aging Research and Drug Discovery forum was originally founded in Basel, Switzerland, as part of the Basel Life/EMBO/MipTec conference. In 2019, Dr. Morten Scheibye-Knudsen took over as the executive chair, and in 2020 it moved to Copenhagen. Today, it is organized by the University of Copenhagen together with Insilico Medicine and is the world's largest forum in longevity biotechnology, bringing together top academic scientists, big pharmaceutical company scientists and executives, VCs, and biotechnology companies.
ABOUT ARDD
1
Top academics + Big Pharma
The original vision for the ARDD was to bring together top academics and big pharmaceutical companies together to develop a pathway for advancing aging research into the pharma R&D pipelines in the most credible way and within the established

I am on track with this goal and have already demonstrated that this platform can outperform traditional pharma and biotech on pre-clinical success rates, time, and cost. We were able to discover truly novel therapeutics that show efficacy in preclinical models and are moving into human trials.

My plan is to also make this platform available to the pharmaceutical companies that are truly interested in transforming their research and development to accelerate and increase the probability of drug discovery and development efforts. Within this platform, we also managed to build one of the most sophisticated knowledge management systems on the planet that can trace innovation and trends from grants to market over 25-30 year periods. I plan to continue developing this system and using it to uncover the most promising trends and directions in biomedical research.
2
AI-POWERED AGING CLOCKS
My other goal is to further develop and perfect our system that allows us to track human aging in time at many levels. To do that, we need to have AI systems that understand and can interpret basic human biology. I think we are halfway there.
3
PERSONALIZED DRUG DISCOVERY
Finally, I want to develop fully autonomous robotic analytics and discovery systems for personalized medicine and personalized drug discovery. While I cannot reveal the details, these systems will allow us to rapidly discover novel targets and pathways to go after a broad spectrum of diseases and further democratize drug discovery.
4
AI AND ROBOTICS-DRIVEN HOSPITALS
My long-term goal (10 years) is to personally fund and build an AI and robotics-driven research hospital where we can bring longevity technologies as close to humans as possible. To get to this goal, I need to first ensure that Insilico Medicine and its ecosystem companies take the dominant role in the biopharmaceutical industry and redefine the way drugs are discovered.
"Longevity ought to be a fundamental human right — the right to live as long and well as possible"

Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD