Impact
Toren Finkel is a cardiologist and ageing biologist who has directed the Aging Institute of the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC since September 2017. Before that he spent 25 years in the intramural program of the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, where he was Chief of the Cardiology Branch and of the Center for Molecular Medicine. His lab's interest in ageing grew from a 1995 Science paper showing that cells deliberately produce hydrogen peroxide as part of normal receptor signalling. That work helped establish reactive oxygen species as signalling molecules rather than only random damaging agents, and prompted a re-evaluation of the free radical theory of ageing. His group studies how mitochondrial function and metabolism regulate ageing, with current work on autophagy, mitochondrial calcium, lysosomal integrity and senescence, including a 2022 Nature paper on a phosphoinositide pathway for rapid lysosomal repair. With colleagues he develops small molecules for age-related diseases, several of which are in clinical development. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of the AAAS.
Metrics
- h-index 125 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research funding
38 NIH awards · USD 29M total NIH RePORTER ↗
- TriState SenNET (Lung and Heart) Tissue Map and Atlas consortium National Institute on Aging · 2021 · USD 3M
- TriState SenNET (Lung and Heart) Tissue Map and Atlas consortium National Institute on Aging · 2025 · USD 3M
- TriState SenNET (Lung and Heart) Tissue Map and Atlas consortium National Institute on Aging · 2024 · USD 3M
- TriState SenNET (Lung and Heart) Tissue Map and Atlas consortium National Institute on Aging · 2023 · USD 3M
- TriState SenNET (Lung and Heart) Tissue Map and Atlas consortium National Institute on Aging · 2022 · USD 3M