David Sinclair

Impact

David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a member of its Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research. His laboratory is known for work on sirtuins, NAD+ metabolism and epigenetic change in aging. The lab reports early findings linking NAD+ biosynthesis to lifespan regulation, the identification of small-molecule SIRT1 activators such as resveratrol, and a series of hypotheses including xenohormesis and the 'information theory of aging', which proposes that loss of epigenetic information drives aging. In 2020 the lab reported in Nature that expressing Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4 in mouse retinal ganglion cells restored youthful DNA methylation patterns and improved vision in aged and glaucoma models, and a 2023 Cell paper used the ICE mouse model to test whether induced epigenetic change accelerates aging. He is co-founder and co-chief editor of the journal Aging, an inventor on patents, and has co-founded several companies, including Sirtris Pharmaceuticals and Life Biosciences, which in 2026 was running a Phase 1 trial of the partial epigenetic reprogramming therapy ER-100 in optic neuropathies. He also communicates widely through books, media and the Lifespan podcast.

Metrics

• h-index 122 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
• USD 80M raised by Life Biosciences as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
• 513,000 subscribers on YouTube as of 2026-09-23 source ↗

Research funding

49 NIH awards · USD 23M total NIH RePORTER ↗

• Uncovering the Human Secretome National Institute on Aging · 2021 · USD 1M
• Uncovering the Human Secretome National Institute on Aging · 2020 · USD 1M
• Uncovering the Human Secretome National Institute on Aging · 2019 · USD 1M
• Uncovering the Human Secretome National Institute on Aging · 2018 · USD 1M
• Uncovering the Human Secretome National Institute on Aging · 2017 · USD 1M

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Research fields

Associated labs