David A. Sinclair

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Australian geneticist (born 1969)

title: "David A. Sinclair" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["australian-biologists", "australian-geneticists", "australian-expatriates-in-the-united-states", "australian-people-of-hungarian-descent", "living-people", "life-extensionists", "longevity-researchers", "biogerontologists", "harvard-medical-school-faculty", "1969-births", "university-of-new-south-wales-alumni"] description: "Australian geneticist (born 1969)" topic_path: "geography/australia" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Sinclair" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Australian geneticist (born 1969) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]

FieldValue
nameDavid A. Sinclair
imageDavid Sinclair.jpg
captionSinclair in 2020
birth_date
birth_placeSydney, New South Wales, Australia
death_date
citizenship
fieldsMolecular genetics
workplacesHarvard Medical School
alma_materUniversity of New South Wales (BSc, PhD)
thesis_title
thesis_url
thesis_year
doctoral_advisorIan Dawes
academic_advisorsLeonard Guarente
known_forResearch on aging
awards{{flat list
signature
website
partner
::

| name = David A. Sinclair | image = David Sinclair.jpg | imagesize = | caption = Sinclair in 2020 | birth_name = | birth_date = | birth_place = Sydney, New South Wales, Australia | death_date = | death_place = | citizenship = | fields = Molecular genetics | workplaces = Harvard Medical School | patrons = | alma_mater = University of New South Wales (BSc, PhD) | thesis_title = | thesis_url = | thesis_year = | doctoral_advisor = Ian Dawes | academic_advisors = Leonard Guarente | doctoral_students = | notable_students = | known_for = Research on aging | author_abbrev_bot = | author_abbrev_zoo = | awards = {{flat list|

  • NIH MERIT Award (2012)
  • The Australian Medical Research Medal (2014)
  • NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2017) | signature = | signature_alt = | website = | footnotes = | spouse = | children = | death_cause = | partner =

David Andrew Sinclair (born June 26, 1969) is an Australian-American biologist and academic known for his research on aging and epigenetics. Sinclair is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and the founding director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging at Harvard. He is the co-author of Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don't Have To.

Early life and education

David Andrew Sinclair was born in Australia in 1969 and grew up in St Ives, New South Wales. His paternal grandmother had emigrated to Australia following the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, and his father changed the family name from Szigeti to Sinclair.

Career

Sinclair met Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Leonard P. Guarente in 1993. Guarente had studied yeast as a model of aging, and after meeting him Sinclair, interviewed for a post-doc position in Guarente's lab.

He worked as a postdoctoral researcher for Guarente for four years and in 1999 he was hired at Harvard Medical School. In 2004, Sinclair met with the philanthropist Paul F. Glenn who donated $5 million to Harvard to establish the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging at Harvard, of which Sinclair became the founding director.

Sirtris was focused on developing Sinclair's research into activators of sirtuins, work that began in the Guarente lab. The company went public in 2007 and was subsequently purchased by and made a subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline in 2008 for $720 million. Five years later, GSK shuttered the Sirtris program without successful drug development.

In 2006, Sinclair co-founded of Genocea Biosciences, a company founded based on the work of Harvard scientist Darren E. Higgins around antigens that stimulate T cells and the use of these antigens to create vaccines; The company delisted from the NASDAQ and closed in 2022 due to lack of funding.

In 2008, Sinclair was promoted to tenured professor at Harvard Medical School. In 2008, he also joined the scientific advisory board of Shaklee and helped them devise and introduce a product containing resveratrol called "Vivix". He later disputed the use of his name and words to promote the supplement, and resigned from the board.

In 2011, Sinclair co-founded OvaScience along with Michelle Dipp, Aldrich, Westphal, and Jonathan Tilly. The company was based on scientific work done by Tilly concerning mammalian oogonial stem cells and work on mitochondria by Sinclair. The company merged with Millendo Therapeutics in 2018. In 2011, he also co-founded CohBar along with Nir Barzilai and other colleagues. CohBar aimed to discover and develop novel peptides derived from mitochondria. CohBar delisted from the NASDAQ upon belief that it was a public shell.

In 2015, he co-founded Metro Biotech along with Washington University in St. Louis professor Dr. Rajendra Apte. The pharmaceutical company focused on NAD+ precursors such as NMN. He also co-founded Animal Bioscience in 2017 along with his brother Nick. The company focuses on small molecule-based therapy for the pet industry.

In 2022, Metro Biotech successfully urged the FDA to take actions to take NMN off the market as a supplement because Metro Biotech had registered NMN in investigational new drug applications. The following year, he co-founded Tally Health, a supplement company with a stated goal to "change the way we age" at the cellular level.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/UN_AI_for_Good_Summit_2025_-_David_Sinclair_02.jpg" caption="AI for Good Summit]] in Geneva"] ::

In 2024, Sinclair resigned as the President of The Academy for Health and Lifespan Research, an organization made up of a group of scientists that Sinclair had co-founded. The resignation came after what The Wall Street Journal described as a "cascade" of resignations from outraged members of The Academy after Sinclair and his brother announced that Animal Bioscience had proven that a supplement for dogs with undisclosed ingredients reversed aging. The claim was also met with criticism and skepticism from other longevity researchers.

Research

Sinclair has expressed the view that there is no limit to human lifespan, and that there is a backup copy of the genetic and epigenetic information in us.

While Sinclair was in Guarente's lab, he discovered that sirtuin 1 (called sir2 in yeast) slows aging in yeast by reducing the accumulation of extrachromosomal rDNA circles. Others working in the lab at the time identified NAD as an essential cofactor for sirtuin function. In 2002, after he had left for Harvard, he clashed with Guarente at a scientific meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, challenging Guarante's description of how sir2 might be involved in aging; this set off a scientific rivalry.

In 2003, Sinclair learned that scientists at a Pennsylvania biotech company called Biomol Research Laboratories had developed a biochemical assays in which they thought that polyphenols including resveratrol activated SIR2. High-profile papers claiming age reversal of mice have also come under intense scrutiny. Sinclair's lab has continued to work on resveratrol and analogues of it as part of their research program in anti-aging.

In December, 2020, Sinclair's group published that three Yamanaka transcription factors, Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4, when delivered together in a virus, could safely reverse the age of human and mouse cells, and restore the vision of old mice and mice with glaucoma. In 2023, with Bruce Ksander's lab at Mass Eye and Ear, they presented a poster at the annual ARVO conference accompanied by a company press release claiming that vision could be restored in non-human primates.

In January 2023, Sinclair's lab published research in Cell purporting to support his Information Theory of Aging, the idea that mammalian aging is due to the loss of epigenetic information, and that Yamanaka factors could exert a degree of artificial control over senescence and rejuvenation in mice. The paper received a formal reply pointing out that the treatment used in the paper is known to produce p53-dependent cell death in a 30-day period in which the mice were not observed. Sinclair's claims of reverse aging have received criticism from other scientists.

Bibliography

Books

In September 2019, Sinclair published Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don't Have To co-written with journalist Matthew LaPlante and translated into 18 languages. This was also released as an audiobook on Audible and read by Sinclair. Sinclair broadly discusses his longevity practices on social media and includes them in his book. They include daily doses of nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) and resveratrol, which Sinclair claims are activators of SIRT1.

Selected publications

References

References

  1. Sinclair, David. (2023-06-28). "David A Sinclair".
  2. Duncan, David Ewing. (August 15, 2007). "The Enthusiast". MIT Technology Review.
  3. "David Sinclair". The Sinclair Lab, Harvard Medical School, Department of Genetics.
  4. (March 1, 2007). "Sirtris S-1 Registration for IPO". Sirtris via SEC Edgar.
  5. Wade, Nicholas. (17 August 2009). "Tests Begin on Drugs That May Slow Aging". The New York Times.
  6. (Mar 12, 2013). "Updated: GSK moves to shutter Sirtris' Cambridge office, integrate R&D". FierceBiotech.
  7. "GSK absorbs controversial 'longevity' company: News blog". Nature Blog.
  8. McBride, Ryan. (12 August 2010). "Former Sirtris Execs' Nonprofit Starts Selling Resveratrol with Potential Anti-Aging Effects Online". Xconomy.
  9. (2005-04-29). "Substrate-specific activation of sirtuins by resveratrol". The Journal of Biological Chemistry.
  10. Richtel, Matt. (16 May 2007). "Warding Off Diseases, Many Vaccines at a Time". The New York Times.
  11. McBride, Ryan. (May 1, 2008). "Polaris' Bitterman is humble about his early VC success". Boston Business Journal.
  12. (24 May 2022). "Genocea closes up shop after failing to find a buyer, delists from Nasdaq". Fierce Biotech.
  13. "Professor David Sinclair {{!}} School of Medical Sciences".
  14. Goldstein, Jacob. (26 December 2008). "Harvard Researcher Tied to Shaklee 'Anti-Aging Tonic' Vivix". WSJ.
  15. (August 29, 2012). "OvaScience S-1". OvaScience via SEC Edgar.
  16. Weintraub, Karen. (December 9, 2016). "Can fertility startup OvaScience really help women conceive late in life, as promised?". MIT Technology Review.
  17. "Once a multibillion dollar company, OvaScience ends a pennystock vehicle for Millendo's reverse merger".
  18. Grant, Bob. (May 1, 2015). "Follow the Funding". The Scientist.
  19. (2023-11-27). "CohBar, Inc.: Notice of Delisting or Failure to Satisfy a Continued Listing Rule or Standard; Transfer of Listing (Form 8-K)".
  20. (19 June 2024). "A Sneak Peek of Sinclair's MetroBiotech Lab and New NMN Clinical Trials". NMN.
  21. (5 March 2024). "Supplement shows potential to reverse aging in dogs". Pet Food Processing.
  22. "In NAC Docket, NAD+ Drug Firm Suggests US FDA Get Serious About Dietary Ingredient Regulations".
  23. "Tally Health — Welcome to a New Age.".
  24. "Star Scientist's Claim of 'Reverse Aging' Draws Hail of Criticism". WSJ.
  25. Molteni, Megan. (2024-03-05). "Harvard longevity scientist sparks furor with claim about reversing aging in dogs".
  26. "How scientists want to make you young again".
  27. (2013-12-19). "PUBPEER Dissection of Anomalies with Figures in Declining NAD(+) induces a pseudohypoxic state disrupting nuclear-mitochondrial communication during aging". PubPeer.
  28. (2020-12-03). "Reprogramming to recover youthful epigenetic information and restore vision". Nature.
  29. (2023-04-23). "Life Biosciences Presents Groundbreaking Data at ARVO Demonstrating Restoration of Visual Function in Nonhuman Primates".
  30. (2023-01-12). "Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging". Cell.
  31. Park, Alice. (2023-01-13). "Scientists Have Reached a Key Milestone in Learning How to Reverse Aging".
  32. (2024-02-29). "The information theory of aging has not been tested". Cell.
  33. Finkel, Toren. (2019-09-10). "The enlightenment of age". Nature.
  34. Sinclair, David A. (10 September 2019). "Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To".
  35. (2022-05-10). "The Anti-Aging Supplements David Sinclair Takes {{!}} Skeptical Review".

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australian-biologistsaustralian-geneticistsaustralian-expatriates-in-the-united-statesaustralian-people-of-hungarian-descentliving-peoplelife-extensionistslongevity-researchersbiogerontologistsharvard-medical-school-faculty1969-birthsuniversity-of-new-south-wales-alumni