Hanadie Yousef, PhD

Dr. Hanadie Yousef is a leading expert on the biology of aging and mechanisms underlying tissue degeneration, a scientific pioneer with two decades of experience in biomedical research, and the co-founder and CEO of Juvena Therapeutics, a venture-backed biotechnology company mapping the therapeutic potential of secreted proteins to develop biologics that prevent, reverse and cure chronic and age-related diseases. Her high-impact published research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the NIH, NSF, SPARK, and CIRM, and has led to multiple issued and pending patents. Under Dr. Yousef’s leadership, since launching in 2018, Juvena has secured nearly $50M and developed a proprietary pro-regenerative protein library supported by an artificial intelligence-enabled drug discovery and development platform. The platform has enabled the identification, extensive preclinical validation, and lead optimization of three novel drug candidates, as well as discovery candidates for several chronic and age-related degenerative diseases.

Dr. Yousef earned her BS in Chemistry with a Spanish minor, summa cum laude from Carnegie Mellon University, a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley as an NSF graduate research fellow, pursued a 5-year postdoctoral fellowship in Neurology at Stanford School of Medicine as an NIH fellow and SPARK scholar, and conducted research and development for Regeneron and Genentech.