Alexander Grinberg, MD

When I was about five years old, I realized for the first time that everyone I loved would one day die. I asked my parents what could be done about it. They told me, gently, that if I cared about such a question, perhaps science would one day find answers. In the way a child decides things, I decided to try.

That question became a lifelong interest in how medicine, biology, and emerging science can help people live with greater health, function, and agency over time. It drew me to biology, chemistry, and physics as a boy, then into medicine at a young age in the former Soviet Union, where I trained in clinical immunology. In the late 1980s, during my research at the Moscow Research Institute of Immunology, I took part in closely monitored clinical use of thymus-derived peptide bioregulators. Professor Vladimir Khavinson became the most influential mentor in my professional life and sparked my enduring interest in peptide medicine. That early work taught me to connect careful laboratory observation with the individual patient in front of me.

When I came to the United States, I became licensed as a physician in California and spent many years moving between the laboratory and the clinic, working with biotechnology companies at the frontier of longevity science. Over more than 35 years I have worked in experimental medicine, peptide therapies, plasmapheresis, and regenerative approaches including cell and gene therapy, and I have served as director of clinical trials, board member, and medical advisor to organizations advancing this field.