Michael Kope, J.D.

Michael Kope, J.D. is the CEO and Cofounder of SENS Research Foundation. He started the Foundation with Aubrey de Grey in 2009 with the hope to have a small role in a lasting revolution. His work with other companies in aging had made it clear, that despite all of the advances in diagnosis, treatment, and management, the social and economic costs for all age-related disease were rising steeply.

Mike called this the conundrum of a system that provides “sick care” instead of “health care”. It seemed clear that the only solution was to use the enormous resources of the healthcare system to learn how to intervene in the underlying causes of such disease, rather than chase the resulting pathologies.

“Quite frankly, at the time I feared that this challenge was beyond the purview of one small group called SRF. But I was underestimating the commitment, the energy, the intellectual honesty, and the vision of all the people that I’ve had the good fortune to work with here. Today, SENS Research Foundation has helped precipitate a real change, and we now see significant energy and investment pouring into the rejuvenation field … in no small part because of those people.” — Mike

Mike earned his J.D. from the Law School of the University of Michigan in 1990. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University.

Mike has served as the University of Michigan’s Intellectual Property Counsel for 8 years, between 1991 and 1999. Among other roles, he served as the Director of Corporate Development for Aviron, and for MedImmune.

He was the CEO of Genomic Systems for 5 years, and officer of a number of start-ups in the biotechnology space. He specializes in business development and consulting, and is widely experienced with biotechnology organizations. He was the Vice President of Business Development at Aridis Pharmaceuticals for 11 years, between 2003 and 2014.

After leaving Genomic Systems in 2009, he became the CEO and Founder of SENS Research Foundation.

Mike has negotiated a broad range of business acquisition and partnership agreements, designed strategies for technology protection and promotion in many fields of research, and facilitated a number of successful startups.

Watch him introduce SENS Research Foundation’s major new initiative, Project|21, created to move the first SENS therapies into human clinical trials by 2021. Watch him giving closing remarks at Rejuvenation Biotechnology in 2016. Watch him delivering his SENS6 Presentation Reimagine Aging.

Visit his LinkedIn profile and his LEAF profile. Follow him on Facebook.