Leen Kawas is a Managing General Partner of Propel Bio Partners LLC. As a leading investment team, the team has focused on biotechnology and healthcare investments for over ten years. In addition to investing in companies, Leen leads Propel’s researchers on various projects aimed at disrupting aging and disease by developing novel treatments that reverse age-related processes.

Kawas has held many key positions in the technology industry, including Apple Vice-President of Worldwide Operations and previously as COO at Lucent Technologies. She also served as SVP of Global Operations at Alcatel-Lucent and COO at Bell Labs International. Before Founding Propel Bio Partners, Leen served as a Managing Director at Sandridge Capital, where she led their biotechnology-focused portfolio of investments.

Leen Kawas has led her team and participated in projects to reverse aging and disease by developing novel treatments that reverse age-related processes. Her work has been based on the foundations of research by the Nobel Prize winner, Drs. Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack W. Szostak, on telomeres—the protein endcap to our chromosomes that keeps them from fraying due to normal cell division. Their work on telomeres has shown that our telomeres become shorter with each cell division and that their repeated shortening is directly responsible for the aging process. Kawas’ research group focuses on uncovering new therapeutic approaches to remediate this problem.

In addition to developing therapeutic approaches for aging, Kawas and her team have been studying cancer using a system that combines human cells with genetically modified mouse stem cells. The team has thus far been able to reverse the observable characteristics of cancer in these cellular systems by targeting several genes involved in cell proliferation and tumor development.

Leen Kawas has been a significant contributor to the technology industry through her innovations in science and technology. Not only has she put her research team to work on resolving age, but also she has helped put the work of other scientists to use by founding and helping to run companies that put this technology into practice.