President, Founder
Valter Longo Ph.D., the Founder and President of the Create Cures Foundation based in Los Angeles, California (USA) and the Fondazione Valter Longo in Milan (Italy), is a best-selling author who was selected by Time Magazine as the world’s Most Influential Nutrition & Health Expert for his research on nutrition and fasting-mimicking diets to improve health and prevent disease.
An Italian-American biogerontologist and cell biologist, he is the Edna Jones Professor in Gerontology and Professor in Biological Science at University of Southern California; the Director of the Longevity Institute at USC’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, which is one of the leading centers for research on aging and age-related disease; and the Director of the Longevity and Cancer Program at the IFOM Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy.
Among his awards, he has received the 2016 Glenn Award for Research on Aging, which was based on the discovery of both genes and dietary interventions able to regulate aging and prevent diseases; the 2013 Vincent Cristofalo “Rising Star” Award in Aging Research from the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR); and the 2010 Nathan Shock Lecture Award from the National Institute on Aging (NIA/NIH).
Dr. Longo opened a premier specialty clinic in Los Angeles in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Create Cures Foundation Clinic focuses on nutrition for the prevention and treatment of major chronic illnesses. The CCF’s clinic uses research-based projects on longevity, aging, and disease associated with aging and clinical studies to provide therapies and assistance in an integrative manner to combine traditional medicine with innovative, well-grounded, and integrative interventions, which helps ensure healthy lives, improve the well-being of all ages, and reduce mortality due to non-communicable diseases, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, autoimmune, neurodegenerative disease, and obesity.
Academically, Dr. Longo earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and completed post-doctoral training in the neurobiology of aging and Alzheimer’s disease at the University of Southern California (USC). His research focuses on the analysis of multiple genetic mechanisms underlying aging and the identification of therapeutic strategies, including nutrition, to slow down or halt the onset of age-related diseases.
Dr. Longo donates all profits from his books to his two charitable foundations, including his best-selling book “The Longevity Diet” (“A dieta da longevidade”), which has been translated into 20 languages and sold in more than 28 countries. His Italian books include “Alla tavola della longevità” (“The Longevity Table”) and “La longevità inizia da bambini” (“The Seeds of Longevity are Planted in Childhood”), which was recently released. In 2012, he appeared on the Emmy-nominated series “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman” to discuss his research on prolonging longevity.
