Boris
Djordjevic
Boris Djordjevic builds across medicine, biotech, software, books, and companies. The common thread is simple: use technology for good, reduce suffering from disease and age, and help human life go a bit beyond what people think is fixed.
Before longevity he founded and scaled companies in China; since 2011 he has put the same energy into aging. He runs 199 Biotechnologies, which brings drug discovery, GMP manufacturing, diagnostics, and clinical delivery into one operation. Molecule to patient. Trained in medicine, he has co-authored papers in Nature Methods and Science Advances, written two books, and open-sourced tools the work needed. Based between London and Singapore.
Research
Published research
Peer-reviewed work across myelination, cancer mechanics, mechanobiology, and longevity.
→ All publications- 2026Tunable hydrogel-based micropillar arrays for myelination studiesDeveloped tunable micropillar arrays mimicking axon biomechanics to model myelination — supports multilayered compact myelin formation and enables drug screening for remyelination therapies.Nature Methods
- 2025Mechanical signatures in cancer metastasisComprehensive review identifying mechanical signatures throughout the metastatic cascade and mechanobiology-based therapeutic interventions for cancer treatment.npj Biological Physics and Mechanics
- 2024Longevity biotechnology: bridging AI, biomarkers, geroscience and clinical applications for healthy longevityLarge ARDD 2023 review synthesising AI, biomarkers, geroscience, and clinical longevity interventions.Aging (Albany NY)
Companies, writing, tools
The 199 Engine
Build
6 companies — one engine from molecule to patient. Discovery, manufacturing, diagnostics, clinic, gene therapy.
View engine→Essays & notes
Write
Plain notes on aging, reprogramming, useful tools, books, and the kind of future worth building.
Read notes→Tools & experiments
Make
Apps, CLIs, ML models, websites. 70 open-source repositories, mostly Rust, because useful things should exist.
See tools→27 Mar 2026
On shipping the infrastructure you need
Legacy pharma tooling couldn't keep up. So I shipped my own — and gave most of it away.
29 Mar 2026
A two-year note on reprogramming cancer cells
Force re-differentiation and cancer cells die from their own epigenetic contradictions.
18 Feb 2026
One company, six parts
Why I built a vertically-integrated longevity company instead of a single therapeutic.
Advising and investing
Boris is always interested in serious science, useful tools, and people trying to reduce suffering from disease and age. If the work can make human life better, it is worth a conversation.
→ Start a conversation