João Pedro de Magalhães

João Pedro de Magalhães is a Portuguese microbiologist at the University of Liverpool. His lab at the University of Liverpool studies aging through both computational and experimental approaches. His ultimate goal is to cure human aging.

In 1999, he obtained his degree in Microbiology from Escola Superior de Biotecnologia. Under Olivier Toussaint, he obtained his PhD from the University of Namur in 2004. Then he did a postdoc in the George Church lab from 2004 to 2008.

He helps maintain several databases on aging - among them - GenAge, AnAge, DrugAge, CellAge, GenDR, the Digital Aging Atlas, and Who's Who in Gerontology. His research group helped sequence the transcriptome of the long-lived bowhead whale. He also helps advise the Lifeboat Foundation.

Among his many longevity-related scientific research projects, Magalhães has sequenced and analyzed the genome of the bowhead whale. And he has also contributed to analysis of the genome of the naked mole rat. Both of these mammals are exceptionally long-lived and exceptionally cancer-resistant.