Kristen Fortney

Impact

Kristen Fortney is co-founder and CEO of BioAge Labs, a clinical-stage biotechnology company founded in 2015 that uses human ageing and longevity data to identify drug targets, now focused on cardiometabolic disease. She received a PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto in 2012 and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, supported by the Ellison Medical Foundation / American Federation for Aging Research. Her research concerned computational drug discovery, biomarkers of ageing and the genetics of exceptional human longevity. Under her leadership BioAge raised a USD 170 million Series D in February 2024 and completed an initial public offering on Nasdaq in October 2024 with gross proceeds of about USD 238.3 million. The company's current pipeline includes BGE-102, an NLRP3 inhibitor being tested in Phase 2 studies for cardiometabolic and retinal disease, and APJ agonists positioned as exercise mimetics for obesity. For the longevity field she is an example of a company built on the premise of mining human ageing biology for drug targets and taking those programmes into clinical trials within conventional disease indications.

Metrics

• USD 170M raised by BioAge Labs as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
• USD 238M raised by BioAge Labs as of 2026-09-23 source ↗

Research output

50 works · 1,755 citations · h-index 21 OpenAlex ↗

Selected publications

• Validation of biomarkers of aging ↗ 2024 · 345 citations
• Eicosanoid signalling blockade protects middle-aged mice from severe COVID-19 ↗ 2022 · 194 citations
• Genome-Wide Scan Informed by Age-Related Disease Identifies Loci for Exceptional Human Longevity ↗ 2015 · 183 citations
• Challenges and recommendations for the translation of biomarkers of aging ↗ 2024 · 110 citations
• Network-based characterization of drug-regulated genes, drug targets, and toxicity ↗ 2012 · 98 citations

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