Living Longer and Living Healthier: The intersection of regenerative medicine and healthful aging
What’s the key to healthful aging? Ask George Murphy, PhD, associate professor of medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.
The Murphy Lab applies stem cell-based models and regenerative medicine to develop and advance techniques in the advancing fields of geroscience and aging biology.
Rather than studying disease itself, the Murphy Lab studies resilience. Murphy’s team imagines a world where people can prevent aging-related diseases and spend more years of their lives delaying or completely avoiding disease or disability.
“In this way, we are using models of human resiliency in a dish to discover the genes and pathways that are linked to healthy longevity… and may even be able to one day delay or even prevent aging as a whole,” Murphy said.
Using what they’ve learned in their ongoing research, current projects aim to find novel geroprotectors – small molecules or other therapeutics – that could prevent diseases like neurodegeneration and increase health span and longevity.
The Murphy Lab often collaborates with the team at the New England Centenarian Study, the largest and most comprehensive study of centenarians and their families in the world. The study is co-directed by Professor of Medicine and Geriatrics Tom Perls, MD, MPH, and Assistant Professor of Medicine Stacey Andersen, PhD.
Along with Murphy, their research aims to answer the question: How can all people live healthier, longer lives free from age-related disease?
The Murphy Lab is one of several labs located at the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM), co-founded in 2013 by Murphy and professors of medicine Darrell Kotton, MD, and Gustavo Mostoslavsky, MD, PhD.
The CReM is a joint effort between BU and Boston Medical Center with nine principal investigators addressing developmental biology, stem cells, regeneration and injury, cell lineage specification, and disease modeling with a focus on iPSCs.
Learn more about our research in aging and regenerative medicine – and the scientists moving this work forward – at the links below.
Meet Todd Dowrey, PhD: Postdoc in the Murphy Lab
Todd Dowrey is a 2025 graduate of the PhD Program in Molecular & Translational Medicine, through the Program in Biomedical Sciences (PiBS). His research in the Murphy Lab studies healthy aging by applying induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models to longevity research.
BU Today: The Secrets of Living to 100
BU Today covered the New England Centenarian Study’s work to determine how some individuals age slowly and often avoid aging-related diseases, with an aim to understand how average aging people could do the same.
Boston Magazine: Why Boston is Becoming the World’s Next Leading Longevity Hub
Boston Magazine highlighted significant aging research projects happening at institutions across the city, including work at the New England Centenarian Study and the Center for Regenerative Medicine.
Nature: What’s the Secret to Living to 100? Centenarian Stem Cells Could Offer Clues
This article from Nature explores research happening between the Murphy Lab at the CReM and the New England Centenarian Study to examine critical insights on brain aging.
The banner image is based on the article A longevity-specific bank of induced pluripotent stem cells from centenarians and their offspring by George Murphy et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.14351.