Tamar Tchkonia

Co-Director, Center for Advanced Gerotherapeutics; Director, Facility for Geroscience Analyses · Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Los Angeles, CA, United States

Scientist Academic

Impact

Tamar Tchkonia is a senescence biologist who co-directs the Center for Advanced Gerotherapeutics at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, which she joined in 2024 after many years at Mayo Clinic. Her research focuses on interventions that target senescent cells and on how removing them affects age-related dysfunction, loss of physical resilience and chronic disease in animal models and humans. With James Kirkland she was among the first to discover senolytic drugs that eliminate senescent cells in vitro and in vivo, showing that pharmacological targeting of these cells can alleviate age-related frailty and symptoms of multiple diseases; these drugs have since entered clinical trials. She is one of the co-inventors of a mouse model in which senescent cells can be selectively removed and a named inventor on patent applications for senescent-cell therapies. She is one of four principal investigators of the Translational Geroscience Network, a consortium of US aging centres building infrastructure for clinical trials of interventions targeting fundamental aging processes, and directs its Facility for Geroscience Analyses. Recent 2026 papers address p16-positive cell clearance after radiation and PD-L2 blockade to prevent senescent cell accumulation.