Determined Problem-Solver

Janine Sengstack, PhD, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Junevity

When asked how she would describe her leadership style, Janine Sengstack, PhD, co-founder and chief scientific officer at Junevity, responds, “My style is one of enthusiasm, grit, and determination to achieve our mission—extending healthspan and lifespan with new therapeutics.”

To that end, Sengstack goes on to describe an initiative built at Junevity called Outlier Culture, where, she says, “We focus on working with great people, great teams, and at high intensity. I want to give our scientists the opportunity to prove themselves and really work hard to then grow.

“I don’t micromanage, and I expect my team to solve hard problems in fast timelines, which requires enthusiasm for the problem,” Sengstack adds. “I allow them the opportunity to then demonstrate that as well.”

In her role at Junevity, Sengstack brings a unique passion to her work. The origins of the company start back when she was still working toward her PhD and she found inspiration in her research.

“We are a biotech company on a mission to extend life and health span,” she says, “and we want to do that by resetting cell health. This involves taking cells from a diseased, old state and bringing them back to a young, healthy state. That science, and our underlying hypothesis, comes from my PhD work at UCSF (University of California San Francisco), where I created the cell-reset platform. That technology uses large-scale human data and AI to identify genes, specifically transcription factors, and then we create siRNA to target them and bring those cells back to a healthy state.”

Sengstack began pursuing her PhD in 2017 and earned the degree in 2023. She founded Junevity and received the company’s first check the same week that she graduated.

“I’m very mission-driven in trying to create a healthier life for people,” she tells Pharm Exec. “We have the chance to offer people longer, healthier lives. That makes coming into work and facing all of the challenges of a startup completely worth it.”

A surprising shift

Sengstack did not start on her PhD thinking that her research and work would eventually lead to her forming a company. Originally, she viewed it as a high-risk, high-reward project. Inspired by stem cell partial reprogramming, Sengstack was interested in discovering new ways to take old cells and turn on specific genes that could, then, turn the old cell back into a stem cell.

“The people who figured that out got a Nobel Prize,” she notes on the initial discovery. “Then other people figured out that if you turn those genes on a little bit, you can make cells act younger. You can even make a whole mouse act younger. It shows you can undo time, so to speak.”

However, manipulating cells this way doesn’t come without risk. “It has side effects, like causing cancer, if you don’t regulate it just right,” Sengstack warns. “We wanted to find brand new transcription factors, new genes to target that could take a cell or a whole organism back to a younger, healthier state. As we saw that it was working, we then shifted toward how to get this to patients as fast as possible.”

Junevity currently has two molecules that are in the preclinical stage and several others that have shown some exciting early data.

Helping helm a biotech, Sengstack says, allows her to work on these molecules and potentially bring them to the clinic in a much faster and more efficient way than had she stayed in an academic setting.

“Everyone working at Junevity is really excited about this mission that we're on,” she says. “Each person on our team contributes great attributes that other people don't have, so we have a lot of non-overlapping skill sets. My co-founders, for example, are phenomenal and successful entrepreneurs before doing Junevity, so that really helps move us faster.”