Irina Conboy

Impact

Irina Conboy studies how the systemic environment of blood controls stem-cell ageing and tissue repair. With Michael Conboy, Thomas Rando and colleagues she was first author of the 2005 Nature study showing that heterochronic parabiosis, joining the circulation of young and old mice, restored the regenerative capacity of aged muscle and liver progenitor cells. Her group later reported that diluting old plasma with saline-albumin, rather than adding young blood, rejuvenated several mouse tissues (Aging, 2020), and published a clinical study of therapeutic plasma exchange and biological age markers (GeroScience, 2022). Recent work includes human microphysiological 'aging-on-a-chip' systems for testing anti-geronic interventions (Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2026). In 2023 she co-founded Generation Lab, a company offering biological-age testing, where she is Chief Science Officer; the company announced an $11 million seed round led by Accel in 2025. Her long-held professorship in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley is described inconsistently across 2026 sources.

Metrics

• USD 15M raised by Generation Lab as of 2026-09-23 source ↗

Research output

164 works · 12,496 citations · h-index 40 OpenAlex ↗

Selected publications

• Rejuvenation of aged progenitor cells by exposure to a young systemic environment ↗ 2005 · 2,312 citations
• Notch-Mediated Restoration of Regenerative Potential to Aged Muscle ↗ 2003 · 1,129 citations
• The Regulation of Notch Signaling Controls Satellite Cell Activation and Cell Fate Determination in Postnatal Myogenesis ↗ 2002 · 900 citations
• Nanoparticle delivery of Cas9 ribonucleoprotein and donor DNA in vivo induces homology-directed DNA repair ↗ 2017 · 770 citations
• A Temporal Switch from Notch to Wnt Signaling in Muscle Stem Cells Is Necessary for Normal Adult Myogenesis ↗ 2008 · 688 citations

Links

Research fields