Cynthia Kenyon: Switching on Resilience

Eric Verdin sits down with Dr. Cynthia Kenyon, a true pioneer in the field of geroscience and the Vice President of Aging Research at Calico. Dr. Kenyon recounts the revolutionary discovery that aging is not merely a process of "wearing out," but is a genetically regulated biological program. In 1993, Cynthia’s pioneering discovery that a single-gene mutation could double the lifespan of C. elegans roundworms while preserving function sparked an intensive study of the molecular biology of aging. The conversation explores how these findings translate from worms to mammals, the potential of drugs like Ozempic and Acarbose to extend human healthspan, and Dr. Kenyon’s proposal for a "World Healthspan Organization" to fund large-scale clinical trials for off-patent, low-cost compounds that currently lack traditional industry incentives.

Cynthia Kenyon graduated valedictorian in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Georgia in 1976 and received her PhD from MIT in 1981. She then did postdoctoral studies with Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. In 1986, she joined the University of California, San Francisco as a Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Dr. Kenyon is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine and she is a past president of the Genetics Society of America. She is now the Vice President of Aging Research at Calico.

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