Mark Kotter

Neurosurgeon & Founder

Consultant Neurosurgeon and Research Professor (PRA) at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Mark Kotter is a clinician-scientist whose work focuses on one central question arising from clinical practice: why does the human nervous system fail to repair itself with age, and how can regeneration be restored?


As a neurosurgeon treating patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM), the most common cause of spinal cord dysfunction in adults, Dr. Kotter recognized that surgery can prevent further injury but cannot reliably restore lost neurological function. He helped establish DCM as a major age-related neurodegenerative disease and contributed to building the modern translational research framework for the field, including international collaborations, outcome measures, and disease models. His work reframed DCM as a disorder of failed neural repair and regeneration.


To address these mechanisms, Dr. Kotter turned to stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. His laboratory developed opti-ox™, a transcription factor engineering platform demonstrating that cell identity can be deterministically controlled through defined genetic programs. This enabled the rapid and reproducible generation of functional human cells from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), establishing a scalable platform for research and therapeutic development. The technology was translated through bit.bio, a company founded by Dr. Kotter that has become a leading stem cell company based on the cell programming paradigm.


His work subsequently expanded into aging and rejuvenation biology, focusing on why regenerative capacity is lost with age. His group developed transcriptomic and imaging-based aging clocks and applied them in genome-wide functional screens, identifying approximately 150 molecular drivers of aging and rejuvenation linked to cellular repair pathways. This work is now being translated through clock.bio, which aims to develop biomarker-driven rejuvenation therapies capable of restoring tissue repair and reversing aspects of biological aging in humans.


Dr. Kotter’s mission is to restore the body’s capacity for repair by understanding and reversing the mechanisms through which aging limits regeneration.