Professor Joao Pedro Magalhaes PhD

Department of Inflammation and Ageing
Professor of Molecular Biogerontology

Contact details

Email: j.p.magalhaes@bham.ac.uk
Twitter: @jpsenescence

Ageing has a profound impact on human society and modern medicine, yet it remains a major puzzle of biology. The goal of my work is to help understand the genetic, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of ageing. In the long term, I would like my work to help ameliorate age-related diseases and preserve health. No other biomedical field has so much potential to improve human health as research on the basic mechanisms of ageing.

Please visit our lab website https://rejuvenomicslab.com for further details about our work and publications, or see my TEDx talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrLgYhtoBXA

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6363-2465

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=DZdgRE4AAAAJ

Qualifications

Professor of Molecular Biogerontolgy:

PhD in Biological Sciences, 2004
Licentiate in Microbiology, 1999

Biography

TEDx talk

Ted-Ed lesson

Prof de Magalhaes graduated in Microbiology in 1999 from the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia in his hometown of Porto, Portugal, and then obtained his PhD in 2004 from the University of Namur in Belgium. Following a postdoc with genomics pioneer Prof George Church at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, in 2008 Prof de Magalhaes was recruited to the University of Liverpool in the UK to establish his own group on genomic approaches to ageing. In 2022, Prof de Magalhaes was recruited to the University of Birmingham as Chair of Molecular Biogerontology where he currently leads the Genomics of Ageing and Rejuvenation Lab [http://rejuvenomicslab.com/].

His lab studies the ageing process and how we can manipulate it to fend off age-related diseases and improve human health. The lab’s research integrates different strategies, but its focal point is developing and applying experimental and computational methods that help bridge the gap between genotype and phenotype, a major challenge of the post-genome era, and help decipher the human genome and how it regulates complex processes like ageing.

Notably, his lab is a world-leader in employing genomics and bioinformatics to study ageing with pioneering work in studying gene networks of ageing and in sequencing and analyzing genomes from long-lived species. Prof de Magalhaes has authored over 100 publications and given over 100 invited talks, including three TEDx talks. His research has also been widely featured in the popular press (BBC, CNN, the Washington Post, the Financial Times and many others).

Prof de Magalhaes is an advisor/consultant for various organizations, including nonprofit foundations, universities, investment funds and biotech companies. In the long-term. Prof de Magalhaes would like his work to contribute to the development of interventions that preserve health and combat disease by manipulating the ageing process

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Altab, G, Merry, BJ, Beckett, CW, Raina, P, Soriano-Arroquia, A, Zhang, B, Vasilaki, A, Goljanek-Whysall, K & de Magalhães, JP 2025, 'miRNA changes with ageing and caloric restriction in male rat skeletal muscle: potential roles in muscle cell function', Biogerontology, vol. 26, no. 6, 202. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10522-025-10336-6

Talay, A, Belikov, AV, To, PKP, Alfatemi, HH, Alon, U, Deelen, J, Ewald, CY, Gems, D, Gorbunova, V, Gruber, J, Hägg, S, Hemming, J, Horvath, S, Kaya, A, Lewis, CJ, Maier, AB, Marinova, MB, Pawelec, G, Peleg, S, Rattan, S, Scheibye-Knudsen, M, Schmauck-Medina, T, Saroyan, V, Seluanov, A, Stolzing, A, Teeling, E, Williams, RW, White, T, Unfried, M & de Magalhães, JP 2025, 'Open problems in ageing science: a roadmap for biogerontology', GeroScience. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-025-01964-4

Welch, C, Acharjee, A, Birch, R, Lourenco Rocha De Magalhaes, JP, Duggal, NA, Hainsworth, A, R. Hombrebueno, J, Jones, SW, Lewis, J, Mazaheri, A, McGettrick, HM, Nicholson, T, Partridge, J, Pinkney, T, Steves, CJ, Tomkova, K, Wilson, D & Jackson, TA 2025, 'Protocol for the REBOUND study: a cohort study to uncover fundamental mechanisms of accelerated ageing and impaired resilience following cancer surgery and treatment', BMC Geriatrics, vol. 25, 502. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-025-06109-y

Belikov, AV, Talay, A & de Magalhães, JP 2025, 'Sex-specific insights into drug-induced lifespan extension and weight loss in mice', npj Aging, vol. 11, no. 1, 37. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41514-025-00229-w

Dos Santos, GA, Magdaleno, GDV & de Magalhães, JP 2024, 'Evidence of a pan-tissue decline in stemness during human aging', Aging, vol. 16, no. 7, pp. 5796-5810. https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205717

Wang, X, Zhang, Y, Chen, K, Liang, Z, Ma, J, Xia, R, de Magalhães, JP, Rigden, DJ, Meng, J & Song, B 2024, 'm7GHub V2.0: an updated database for decoding the N7-methylguanosine (m⁷G) epitranscriptome', Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 52, no. D1, pp. D203-D212. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkad789

de Magalhães, JP, Abidi, Z, Dos Santos, GA, Avelar, RA, Barardo, D, Chatsirisupachai, K, Clark, P, De-Souza, EA, Johnson, EJ, Lopes, I, Novoa, G, Senez, L, Talay, A, Thornton, D & To, PKP 2023, 'Human Ageing Genomic Resources: updates on key databases in ageing research', Nucleic Acids Research, pp. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkad927

Lagger, C, Ursu, E, Equey, A, Avelar, RA, Pisco, AO, Tacutu, R & de Magalhães, JP 2023, 'scDiffCom: a tool for differential analysis of cell–cell interactions provides a mouse atlas of aging changes in intercellular communication', Nature Aging, vol. 3, no. 11, pp. 1446-1461. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-023-00514-x

de Magalhães, JP 2023, 'The longevity bottleneck hypothesis: Could dinosaurs have shaped ageing in present‐day mammals?', BioEssays. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202300098

Dos Santos, GA, Chatsirisupachai, K, Avelar, RA & de Magalhães, JP 2023, 'Transcriptomic analysis reveals a tissue-specific loss of identity during ageing and cancer', BMC Genomics, vol. 24, no. 1, 644. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-023-09756-w

Mikaeloff, F, Gelpi, M, Escos, A, Knudsen, AD, Høgh, J, Benfield, T, de Magalhães, JP, Nielsen, SD & Neogi, U 2023, 'Transcriptomics age acceleration in prolonged treated HIV infection', Aging Cell. https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.13951

Review article

Gems, D, Virk, RS & de Magalhães, JP 2024, 'Epigenetic clocks and programmatic aging', Ageing Research Reviews, vol. 101, 102546. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2024.102546

de Magalhães, JP 2023, 'Ageing as a software design flaw', Genome Biology, vol. 24, no. 1, 51. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-023-02888-y

Short survey

De Magalhães, JP & Ocampo, A 2022, 'Cellular reprogramming and the rise of rejuvenation biotech', Trends in Biotechnology, vol. 40, no. 6, pp. 639-642. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2022.01.011

De Magalhães, JP 2022, 'Every gene can (and possibly will) be associated with cancer', Trends in Genetics, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 216-217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tig.2021.09.005

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