Dr. Sell, Co-founder of Boinca Therapeutics, has devoted a majority of his career to studying aging. Age is the greatest risk factor for the majority of human diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease.

Aging occurs at both the cellular and organismal level and the Sell lab at Drexel University utilizes multiple approaches to understand the aging process and to identify interventions that can ameliorate age-related declines to improve human health.

The field has identified a major pathway that can modulate the aging process (known as the mTOR pathway), which is a part of the neuroendocrine signaling network that regulates both development and aging. Dr. Sell's lab was the first to report that this pathway is hyperactivated in aged cells and we have focused on this pathway to understand both the mechanisms involved and to leverage drugs known to target the pathway to improve health. We have found that targeting mTOR using an FDA approved drug known as rapamycin can extend the lifespan of human cells and decrease the appearance of aged cells in human skin.