Dr. Hanadie Yousef is a leading expert on the biology of aging and mechanisms underlying tissue degeneration with over two decades of experience in biomedical research. In 2018, she launched Juvena Therapeutics, a venture-backed biotechnology company mapping the therapeutic potential of secreted proteins and accelerating their translation into engineered tissue restorative biologics for degenerative diseases.
Under Dr. Yousef’s leadership, Juvena leveraged its AI-enabled platform to develop a proprietary, pro-regenerative protein library that enabled the discovery and development of a growing pipeline of biologics for muscle and metabolic diseases. The company’s lead asset, JUV-161, promotes muscle regeneration. Juvena has completed IND-enabling studies and is expected to enter the clinic in 2025 for the treatment of Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1. In addition, Juvena is progressing with multiple preclinical programs across metabolic and fibrotic disease areas, including a novel preclinical obesity asset, JUV-112, that uniquely enhances lipid metabolism to induce weight loss through a non-appetite-suppressing mechanism.
Dr. Yousef’s high-impact published research has been supported by grants from the NIH, NSF, SPARK, and CIRM and led to multiple patents. She received multiple awards for her entrepreneurship and innovation, including San Francisco Business Times’ "Women Who Lead in Life Sciences", In Vivo’s "Rising Leaders", FierceBiotech’s “Fiercest Women in Life Sciences”, Business Insider’s “30 Leaders Under 40 Changing Healthcare in 2023”, Endpoints’ “The 20(+2) under 40”, and Pharmaceutical Executive’s “Emerging Pharma Leader” in 2023, and the 2022 Biocom Catalyst award. Under her leadership, Juvena was recognized as the "NextGen Class of 2024: Top Life Sciences Startups to Watch This Year" by BioSpace and as a World Economic Forum 2024 Technology Pioneer company. Dr. Yousef earned her B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University, a PhD from UC Berkeley as an NSF graduate research fellow then completed a 5-year postdoc at Stanford as an NIH fellow and SPARK scholar.
