Journeys in Longevity - Carol Magalhaes
Ever considered entering a career in Longevity? We have too. Join us as we Xplore Carol's journey into Aging Biology and Longevity through an exclusive in-depth interview.
“What do you want your life to be like when you're 80? Or when you're 100? Personally, when I think about my life, I get a little scared. I don't know if there's much to look forward to when I'm 80 years old. But I want to get to a point when this number is a completely arbitrary number instead of being (as it is now) almost a sentence.“ - Carol Magalhaes
Table of Contents:
Alone in the Americas - Diving into a Dream
The Spark
Igniting an Interest
The Vision
A Slice of Life - Carol’s Efforts & Career
Reproductive Aging
TIME Initiative
age1
Evolving Career
Briefly: Carol Magalhaes
In this interview, we have a friend and fellow longevity researcher Carol Magalhaes joining us to share her longevity journey. Carol is a Molecular Genetics student at Northwestern University, a Venture Fellow with Age1, and a TIME Initiative Fellow. Previously, she worked on research projects with the Duncan Lab, Church Lab and ran Nucleate Dojo’s first-ever Dojo House, an undergraduate biotech hub.
Alone in the Americas - Diving into a dream:
With a strong multifaceted background and a particular passion for reproductive aging, Carol stands out as one of the bright minds poised to become a future leader in the longevity field. However, her contributions and accomplishments to date have been no easy task. Having been born and raised in Brazil – a country with limited research funding and equipment – resources would be more restrictive than ambition. As such, her early years were spent with dreams of what lay beyond her home, starting with an exchange program in the United States (US) at the age of 14.
“The idea was that I would study English at a boarding school for six months, and after that program, I would go back to Brazil. Halfway through the program, I decided I didn't want to go back to Brazil. There were more opportunities in the US, and the classes I was taking were a lot more interesting and engaging.”
From robotics clubs and 3D printers to dedicated chemistry and physics labs, the hands-on education within the US was an eye-opening experience. Yet boarding schools were expensive and Carol’s parents made it clear that the US wouldn’t be an option for long-term future studies. Not one to be easily dissuaded, Carol secretly formulated a plan. After many long nights applying for financial aid/scholarship programs, and cold emailing schools, she eventually got her chance to attend high school in the US.
My parents didn't really know I was applying to any of these boarding schools even to start with. I brought them the acceptance package and said, “I want to finish high school in Minnesota”. They asked, “Where is that?” “Well, you know, Canada is close”. And then we started buying winter jackets. They were definitely very surprised.
Journey Entering Longevity
The Spark
What are the most pressing problems in the 21st century? Throughout high school, Carol’s mind restlessly sought answers to this question. Transhumanism and philosophy seemed to contour fundamental aspects of the answer.
What is reality? How do our senses impact what we experience as real? What if we had more senses? How much of the world are we just not experiencing? How does that impact what we consider to be objective reality?
Consequently but not surprisingly, biology piqued her interest. Where would the field of biology take her specifically? This was an uncertainty, but not a roadblock in her exploration.
This was the subject I flourished in, that came easiest to me, and that I felt the most satisfaction from. I always found biology to be incredibly beautiful.
She explored the space of biology, even competing in ethics debates on emerging technologies such as CRISPR. By chance, she stumbled upon a book on the biology of aging where she gained insights on what it meant to be healthy, igniting her passion for longevity.
Transhumanism proposed enhancing human function but shouldn’t we establish a baseline of health before then?
Like all of us here at LongX, we recognize the arduous path of exploring longevity. There is very little consistency in the routes leading to a career in the field, especially with up-and-coming enthusiasts. Garnering an interest is the right first step but you may still find yourself adjacent rather than within.
Igniting an Interest
Thereon, she pursued opportunities in the longevity field during her undergraduate career. Like many other students, these were not easy to come by, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, her first opportunities were in the biotechnology field, working with Acorn Genetics for a year before engaging in academic research in the realm of biological engineering with the Jewett Lab at Northwestern University. However, Carol was still adamant about pursuing aging research.
Eventually, I joined the Church lab, and took a semester off from school to continue doing that research. I got really interested in reproductive aging, and as I came back to Northwestern I started working in a project in the area with the Duncan Lab. We were looking at the effect of anti-fibrotic and anti-inflammatory drugs in the ovary and whether these could delay reproductive aging and extend health in mice.
In regards to how she ended up working in the latter lab, Carol emailed Dr. Francesca Duncan directly, expressing her interest in joining the lab.
I reached out to Dr. Francesca Duncan at my university, Northwestern, and was very fortunate to work with Dr. Farmers Amargant in the Duncan Lab. They were both very supportive of my interests and are huge inspirations to me.
Now a Venture Fellow at age1 in her final year of university, Carol is setting her sights on her next big stride in longevity.
Defining Longevity
“The way I've described it before is that there is a biological thread in your body that impacts the way you age. Aging is not something you can change, but that can be modulated.” - Carol
“Many different fields of science overlap onto longevity... Aging is so interdisciplinary, almost too broad of a field”
There are a broad set of definitions for ‘longevity’. With an even broader set of attached opinions. So we just had to know, what does the word mean for her? How would she describe it?
“The word “longevity” itself I portray as the idea of being independent and autonomous well into your life, ... Right now, people slowly die, before they are considered biologically dead. As they get old, they start losing their memory, their ability to move around the world and do the things that they love and give their life meaning. To me, that is equivalent to losing yourself, and somehow we've normalized it.”
The Vision:
Carol is looking to give people autonomy and independence in their old age. She wants to normalize questions like, “What do you want your life to be like when you're 80? Or when you're 100?” and have something to look forward to when she gets older.
“When I'm eighty years old, I want to be able to start a new career if I want to, I want to be able to go back to college, go on a surfing trip with friends, because why not? I want to get to a point when this number is completely arbitrary instead of being (as it is now) almost a sentence.”
Through untangling aging biology, she hopes to create a world where everyone can be healthy.
“Estimates show that, if you were to cure cancer, that would only extend the average lifespan by two years. Even if you can cure cancer, or some cardiovascular disorder, someone at an old age is just as likely to develop another age-related diseases like, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or a chronic disorder. The medical care system would be most positively impacted by better understanding the root cause of many diseases – aging.”
This, she believes, is a better method of looking at the medical care system – through a preventative lens to tackle the root causes of diseases. Her focus is on the underlying biology of aging and the variety of factors that weave its web of complexity. How complex are we talking? Well Carol, had a barrage of what she described as "fun" questions for us to ponder on.
“ It is a systems biology issue – aging happens at the level of organisms, organs, tissues and cells. It doesn't have a single cause. It happens on every layer.
It gets really fun to try to think about, what it is that's causing aging?
What are the levers (factors) you can change that's going to have a significant impact on someone?
And if you change multiple levers, which ones are going to add up? Or which ones would not have additive effects? Why do you think that is?
Is aging something that just happens because of entropy?
Is it a stochastic process? Or do you think there is a number of things directly cause aging? Is there some point your body starts crumbling down?
Even if you think that there are causative factors, would we be able torepair those things after the body starts crumbling down?
Would that help? Or is it too late?”
(Did you catch how many questions she mentioned?)
The Longevity Field - Where are we? Where are we going?
A decade ago, the aging biology field and longevity movement operated on a much smaller scale than today. With a growth in the amount of funding, companies, and labs tackling aging in 2024, Carol remains an optimist for the future.
I think we'll have the first longevity drug approved in the next 10 years, even though I am not sure how people will achieve that and what their regulatory pathway will look like. This doesn’t imply there will only be one longevity drug. Rather, we will have waves of longevity drugs with different use cases, for different people who are going to work in different ways having different mechanisms of action.
Carol feels strongly about shifting a stronger focus to understanding aging rather than individual diseases. Longevity is a high-impact issue but are we doing it correctly?
I'm interested in the underlying biological aspect that's changing how you age as an organism. But we’re spending billions of dollars on all these branches of the trees as opposed to the actual roots of the problem.
The pros of shifting the approach?
People are going to be healthier and develop less age-related diseases.
The medical care system saves money and resources
That being said, Carol recognizes that the aging field is inherently interdisciplinary. Many of the early discoveries were side effects of other research. Aging ties into all facets of biology but also isn’t an issue biology can solve alone.
Right now in terms of human knowledge, we're not able to see the connections. That’s why we need to make significant discoveries in fields like chemistry and physics.
A Slice of Life - Carol’s Efforts
Part of a myriad of aging-focused ventures, here are a few of the initiatives Carol is proud to represent:
Reproductive Aging
Research Fellow with the Francesca Duncan Lab
As a student at Northwestern, Carol reached out to Dr. Francesca Duncan to engage in her lab’s research. Working alongside Dr. Farmers Amargant in the Duncan Lab, she looked at the effects of anti-fibrotic and anti-inflammatory drugs in the ovary and assessing if they could delay reproductive aging and extend health in mice.
One of the reasons for choosing to work on reproductive aging was, however, a personal one.
I want to have a family and kids one day, but I would often find myself asking questions like "how many years can I take between undergrad and grad school if I want to have kids by X age" and it frustrated me that I even had to consider these things. Around the same time my mom started perimenopause and I started reading about menopause/ its impacts on health, and became mindblown that very little research and innovation was happening in this area.
TIME Initiative
With a mission to activate student interest in aging biology, the TIME Initiative represents a network of some of the brightest undergraduate minds in aging. Although Carol comes from a scientific background, she stresses that it’s not just something for biologists.
It's intended as something for anyone who's passionate about this field, regardless of background. For example, one of the fellows had a policy background and his goal is improving the regulatory process, and doing lobbying with the FDA.
Age1
During her time with BioDojo, Carol met Alex Colville, Co-Founder and General Partner at age1, at a networking event.
I told him about my aspiration to become a longevity company founder and, in a way, he became a mentor in various other instances in my life
What does age1 do? As Carol mentioned in our conversation, “Laura Deming was the first person to put aging in the map in a very pragmatic way”. As a renowned venture capitalist known for her focus on aging alnd longevity science, she founded The Longevity Fund, putting longevity biotech on everyone’s radar. What started as a early-stage fund and 3-month accelerator has now evolved into age1.
age1 is investing in the companies that are actually going to make the difference and get that drug approved
Joining age1 as a Venture Fellow, Carol focuses on diligence in companies, community building, and written content, including a guide on longevity by delaying menopause.
She describes age1 as:
The most ambitious group of people I have ever seen. But they’re also pragmatic and scientifically rigorous. That's what makes the difference.
Frankly, we agree. Carol is as ambitious as they come.
Evolving Career
Carol is a force to be reckoned with, but as a young face in a field of experts, there are bound to be challenges. But how does it feel like to be in her position?
When I started working in the Church lab, I was like, What am I doing here? I don't know if I'm gonna add any value. Now I really think I did, and I learned tons. Similarly, I experienced it at age1, when I first started working there.
Impostor syndrome, turns out, is something she felt as well.
It was definitely there. I think it's hard to find a person who never experienced impostor syndrome. Especially if you are someone who is always putting yourself outside of your comfort zone and doing things that make you scared. It’s natural, and I'm no different.
The comfort zone is something to break out of, once in a while. And to sustainably live outside your comfort zone, having trustworthy friends to be honest and vulnerable with is a possible anchor to keep you stable.
I have really close friends who I think are incredible and I look up to, but if I weren't as close to them, I would think, “Wow, they're at the top of the world!”. But when you're actually close, you see that nothing is perfect. No one's life is perfect, and being able to tell them about what you're feeling and have them being vulnerable with you makes you realize that everyone is on the same boat.
It seems things are going great. Clearly, Carol must have no regrets in her journey?
I usually don't think in terms of regrets. Maybe the first thing that I think about right away is, “Was I audacious enough?”
The one thing she did wish she realized earlier?
Things that you think are outside of your reach, are not as far outside, as you think they are.
As a freshman in college, she doubted whether she was good enough or needed additional preparation before reaching out to grasp her goals. And although risk-taking was not an inherent trait, it was something to develop. Over time, Carol’s audacity manifested with taking time off of school for research and working at age1 from the ground up.
In reality, it just took a couple of emails and being really honest about being passionate and hard-working.
But how to find the next thing to work on, or reach?
I try to think, what is the coolest, most impactful thing I could do next? The thing that I think is not realistic, the thing that people are going to think that I'm crazy for even trying. And then I’d actually try to do it.
If it doesn't work out, that's fine.
Carol might be onto something. She shared her process of joining the Church lab, which started with asking the question, "What is the coolest lab in the world I can join?" Even believing that there was little to no chance of coming on board, she retained the lab as her top option. Although she originally planned to go down her list of labs she wanted to work with, it seems her efforts aiming for the stars paid off quickly.
I start with my very top choice. If you don't hit the stars, you might hit the moon.🌙
A Note from the LongX Team:
This idea of believing in an idea and shooting for it is something we would like to encourage our readers to reflect on.
Longevity Xplorers Sufal and Marvin had a similar idea with their podcast, Im a Mortal. "What's the best way for me to learn about all the intricacies of aging during a global pandemic?" Although they faced countless rejections, never in a million years did they think they would have the opportunity to interview guests such as Sergey Young, Bryan Caplan, and Dmitry Kaminskiy. Along the same lines, it was a few months back that Xplorer Denisa asked herself, "what's the most interesting place to be in, during the winter?" For her, the answer turned out to be Vitalia, Honduras, where she attended as the only undergraduate student, organized a longevity conference and spent a month surrounded by visionary folks in the space, funded by Emergent Ventures. There was, however considerable planning that had to go into this particular trip, with financial, academic, and familial obstacles that had to be overcome.
The moral of the story is to never let yourself be the thing that holds you back.
Inspiration in Longevity
At LongX, one of our main focuses is providing resources for everyone, including budding Longevity Xplorers, the next generation tackling aging.
With her undergraduate degree entering its final semester, Carol provided our audience, aka you with a few pieces of advice for those also looking to get their start in the field.
Sometimes when you're young, it takes time to find something you care about. It takes a lot of training and exposure, and you have to try different things. It's natural, it takes time, and you should not try to speed it up or rush through it. It's part of life. But in the meantime, find problems and spend time with people who inspire you.
The name of the game? Exposure. None of us knew we would enter a field as niche as aging biology. Denisa herself was deeply immersed in mathematics and computer science until late high school, following the Romanian stereotypical path of becoming a software developer for Big Tech. It was due to the transhumanist community she interacted with that she instantly became fond of the longevity field, and decided to commit.
In the end, all we can do is keep an open mind. But there are active efforts we can initiate to get more young people interested in aging.
For example, reach out to someone who does interesting work in this field and just try to learn about their passions. Also, one thing everyone in the aging field should listen to is this podcast by the Radio Lab on Rapamycin. The company that discovered it almost completely destroyed all their samples, but the scientists working on it kept some of it in a container of ice creamin his fridge for years. The story is mindblowing.
Create online content, like better and more accessible YouTube or TikTok videos. Eleanor Sheekey has some fantastic videos on the topic.
Find opportunities. The TIME fellowship is great for linking undergrads who are interested in the field with labs doing this sort of research.
But niche fields have this cyclical issue. A lack of opportunities = a lack of people, a lack of people = a lack of opportunities. From Carol’s own experience reproductive biology isn’t quite on par with cancer biology. How do we change that?
Funding. Ultimately, opportunity comes from funding. There is more cancer research and therefore more cancer classes/opportunities responsible for cultviating the next generation of researchers. There's not tons of reproductive health research happening.
Carol’s journey is a lesson about drive and perseverance, and how far these can take you in a short period. This holds particularly true in a field with a lack of documentation and history such as longevity biotech, where we lack awareness, clear entry points and paths, and it is often unclear how to get involved early-career. At LongX, we aim to cluster together resources that help clear out these points and make it easier for you, as a longevity explorer, to navigate the space. In the end, we want you to have just one thing to do: choose what you wish to be.