BioAge Chief Business Officer Peng Leong Appointed Company’s First Head of Brain Aging

May 23, 2022 at 06:00 AM EDT

Expanded role focuses on developing targets to treat brain aging, a critical aspect of the aging process that drives neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders

BioAge Labs, Inc. (“BioAge”, “the Company”), a biotechnology company developing therapeutics that target the molecular causes of aging to extend healthy human lifespan, today announced that BioAge chief business officer (CBO) Peng Leong, PhD, MBA, has been appointed as the Company’s Head of Brain Aging.

“I am thrilled to announce that Peng Leong has expanded his role at BioAge by becoming our first Head of Brain Aging,” said Kristen Fortney, PhD, CEO and co-founder of BioAge. “Peng played an essential role in our early success, building partnerships that enabled rapid growth of the Company’s clinical programs based on our proprietary discovery platform. With his experience, vision, and leadership, we are very excited about the prospects of applying our platform to brain aging, an area of enormous unmet patient need and vast market potential.”

As CBO, Leong has led BioAge’s efforts to identify and execute strategic transactions that help the company convert prioritized drug targets into a portfolio of therapies for treating severe diseases of aging. In the new role as Head of Brain Aging, he will leverage his background and experience to pursue critical partnerships, identify and secure new in-licensing opportunities, and lead internal activities specific to brain aging.

“Brain aging drives disorders such as dementia, which today affects 6 million people in the United States alone, underscoring the importance of addressing this key aspect of the aging process,” said Leong. “Our first brain aging program, a CNS-penetrant inhibitor of NLRP3 announced earlier this month, acts by blocking neuroinflammation, a key contributor to multiple age-related diseases. In addition, we are currently validating multiple brain aging targets in other pathways. Starting from this promising foundation, I am eager to help the Company discover therapeutics in this critical field.”

Leong has accumulated extensive strategic experience in the biopharmaceutical sector, including as Head of General Medicine Business Development at Merck KGaA and Director, Healthcare Investment Banking at Piper Jaffray. Prior to joining BioAge as CBO in March 2019, he served as CBO of Kazia Therapeutics. He holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Toronto and an MBA from the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business.

About BioAge Labs, Inc.

BioAge is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a pipeline of treatments to extend healthy lifespan by targeting the molecular causes of aging. The company uses its discovery platform, which combines quantitative analysis of proprietary longitudinal human samples with detailed health records tracking individuals over the lifespan, to map out the key molecular pathways that impact healthy human aging, thus revealing the causes of age-related disease. By targeting the mechanisms of aging with a large and mechanistically diverse portfolio of drugs, BioAge is unlocking opportunities to treat or even prevent these diseases in entirely new ways. To date, BioAge has raised $127M from Andreessen Horowitz, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and others. BioAge currently has three clinical-stage programs in its growing portfolio. For additional information about BioAge, visit the company’s website at https://www.bioagelabs.com.