Insilico Medicine has announced the full program for the 13th Aging Research & Drug Discovery (ARDD) Meeting, set for October 1-3, 2026, at the David Rubenstein Treehouse at Harvard University in Boston. The three-day conference will bring together leaders from pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology, academia, clinical medicine, investment, AI, and policy to examine the shift of longevity research from fundamental biology into therapeutic development and clinical practice.
ARDD began 13 years ago as a small gathering in Basel to connect pharma and academic researchers. The 2026 edition moves to Boston with its largest program to date, reflecting how the field has matured toward drug discovery, regulatory strategy, and commercial partnerships.
Program spans discovery to commercialization
The agenda covers the full arc from biology of aging to market entry, with sessions on clinical trials, regulatory pathways, AI in healthspan research, pharma R&D productivity, drug discovery, therapeutic licensing, and investment. The conference will include a Pharma Chief Executive Panel featuring Christophe Weber, former CEO of Takeda; Elcin Barker Ergun, CEO of Menarini; Fiona Marshall, President of Biomedical Research at Novartis; and Ariel Feldstein, CSO of Internal Medicine at Pfizer.
Marshall will also deliver a talk titled "Reimagining Drug Discovery Through the Lens of Aging Biology." Other sessions include representatives from Eli Lilly, Astellas, GSK, Daiichi Sankyo, Genentech, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Roche, Sanofi, and Lundbeck, alongside academic scientists and editors from publications including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, Nature Aging, and Financial Times.
The investment track brings in leaders from Deerfield, OrbiMed, Oaktree Capital Management, Qiming Venture Partners, UBS, Value Partners Group, Danaher Ventures, and LongeVC to examine capital formation and partnering in longevity therapeutics.
AI and the expanding field
Dedicated forums will cover Longevity Medicine, AI in Drug Discovery, Pet and Animal Longevity, and a session on the Virtual Aging Cell. The AI-focused programming includes computational drug design, large-scale datasets for future AI systems, AI approaches to neurodegeneration, and systems immunology and immune aging.
"For over a decade, ARDD has served as a global platform for academia-pharma-startup-investor dialogue, and this year we have reached a new level," said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine and Co-Chair of ARDD. "The 2026 program brings together leaders from major pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology, academia, AI, investment, scientific publishing and policy in one place."
For research scientists working with AI in drug discovery or aging biology, the meeting offers a direct view of how generative AI is being applied to therapeutic development. The focus on AI-driven approaches to neurodegeneration and large-scale datasets is directly relevant to AI for Science & Research professionals looking to see which computational methods are gaining traction in clinical settings.
The event also reflects how the longevity field is consolidating around concrete milestones. "The biology of aging has become one of the most promising frontiers in biomedical science," said Vadim Gladyshev, Executive Chair of ARDD and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Conferences like ARDD play an important role by bringing together the people who can ask difficult questions, test new ideas, and build the partnerships needed to advance the field."
Registration is open at www.agingpharma.org.
Why this matters for research scientists
For research scientists, the ARDD 2026 program signals where the longevity field is heading: compute-driven drug discovery, clinical translation, and cross-sector partnerships. The conference's emphasis on AI approaches to neurodegeneration and virtual cell modeling points to the tools that may shape research workflows in the next few years. For those looking to build those skills, the AI Learning Path for Research Scientists provides a structured route into the methods being presented at the meeting.
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