Pinchas Cohen MD

Pinchas Cohen, MD, is the dean of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, executive director of the Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center, and holder of the William and Sylvia Kugel Dean’s Chair in Gerontology. He is an expert in the study of mitochondrial peptides and their possible therapeutic benefits for diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases related to aging. Cohen also holds joint appointments at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and in the Department of Biological Sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.

Cohen’s current research focus is on the emerging science of mitochondria-derived peptides, which he discovered. These peptides include humanin, a 24-amino acid peptide encoded from the mt-16S-rRNA. It is a novel, centrally acting insulin sensitizer and a metaboloprotective factor representing a new therapeutic and diagnostic target in diabetes and related disease. Other mitochondrial peptides of interest include MOTS-c, a second peptide encoded from a small ORF in the 12S region of the mitochondrial chromosome that has potent anti-diabetes and anti-obesity effect and acts as an exercise-mimetic, and SHLP2, a peptide encoded from the light strand of the mt-16S-rRNA region whose levels correlate with prostate cancer.