David Gems

Impact

David Gems is Professor of Biogerontology and Research Director of the UCL Institute of Healthy Ageing, of which he is a founder member. He began working on the biology of ageing in 1993 in Don Riddle's lab at the University of Missouri-Columbia and set up his own lab at UCL in 1997 with a Royal Society fellowship. His work mainly uses the nematode C. elegans to study the fundamental mechanisms that cause ageing and late-life disease, and he has contributed to ageing studies in other nematodes, Drosophila, mice and Pacific salmon. His most-cited papers include the discovery that loss of the insulin receptor substrate CHICO extends Drosophila lifespan, a study showing that metformin slows C. elegans ageing by altering microbial folate and methionine metabolism, and a review on the biological roles of reactive oxygen species. He is associated with 'programmatic' theories of ageing, which seek general evolutionary and mechanistic explanations of ageing and multifactorial late-life disease, and he also writes on ethical and philosophical issues in ageing research. His book for general readers, 'On Aging: Solving the Mysteries of Late-Life Maladies', is listed by Columbia University Press for March 2027.

Metrics

• h-index 72 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗

Research output

226 works · 20,876 citations · h-index 64 OpenAlex ↗

Selected publications

• Extension of Life-Span by Loss of CHICO, a Drosophila Insulin Receptor Substrate Protein ↗ 2001 · 1,481 citations
• Guidelines for measuring reactive oxygen species and oxidative damage in cells and in vivo ↗ 2022 · 1,452 citations
• Ribosomal Protein S6 Kinase 1 Signaling Regulates Mammalian Life Span ↗ 2009 · 1,140 citations
• Metformin Retards Aging in C. elegans by Altering Microbial Folate and Methionine Metabolism ↗ 2013 · 992 citations
• Unraveling the Biological Roles of Reactive Oxygen Species ↗ 2011 · 840 citations

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