Key points from article :
Altos Labs, a well-funded and secretive anti-aging biotech company, has hired Joan Mannick as its new chief medical officer. Mannick is a geroscientist with deep experience in clinical development and a long history of working with mTOR inhibitors, a class of drugs linked to aging research. Before joining Altos, she co-founded and led Tornado Therapeutics, a Cambrian Bio portfolio company, which partnered with Novartis to develop rapamycin-related therapies for conditions ranging from respiratory infections to cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Earlier in her career, she co-founded resTORbio, another Novartis-affiliated biotech that later merged with Adicet Bio. She also served as executive director at Novartis’ New Indications Discovery Unit until 2017. In a LinkedIn post, Mannick described joining Altos as her “dream job,” emphasizing her excitement about working on cellular rejuvenation to fight disease.
Hal Barron, CEO of Altos Labs, highlighted her track record, noting that her leadership will help translate the company’s scientific research into real medical treatments. The position had been vacant for about two years, since the departure of immunology leader Herbert “Skip” Virgin. While Altos continues to keep details of its pipeline private, its recent acquisition of Dorian Therapeutics signals ambitions in senoblocker therapies.
