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David Andrew Sinclair is a Australian teacher of genetics at Harvard University who specializes in the study of anti-aging.

Early Life
Sinclair grew up in Saint Ives Australia where he experimented with making bombs from chlorine or gunpowder, as well as engaging in speeding that got his drivers license revoked. He attended the University of New South Wales where he studied gene regulation in yeast.

Education
While attending college he heard a lecture by a visiting researcher named Leonard Guarente, a researcher in molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sinclair ended up joining Guarente’s lab as a post doctoral student in 1995 In 1999 Sinclair was offered a position with Elixir Pharmaceuticals which his colleague and mentor Guarente had cofounded.

Career
In 2004, Sinclair convinced philanthropist Paul Glenn to donate 5 million dollars to start an institute to study aging at Harvard, which Sinclair became director of.

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals
Sinclair cofounded a biotechnology company called Sirtris Pharmaceuticals in 2004 with the assistance of Kevin Bitterman, a researcher at Harvard Medical School who studied under Sinclair. In May 2007, Sirtris completed its initial public offering and raised 62 million dollars.

His company became one of the biggest in its industry. Using the compound resveratrol, a compound was put into development called SRT501. This compound contained molecules that were claimed to be able to activate sirtuins. Their animal drug testing shows that this formula could help treat diabetes and neurological disorders. Human trials were planned for the drug to see its effects on Melas syndrome, a disease that causes accelerated aging and brain and muscle deterioration.

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals was sold in 2008 for 720 million to GlaxoSmithKline, of which Sinclair received 8 million. GlaxoSmithKline ended research into resveratrol in 2010 because of its low efficacy and side effects. Sirtris’s existence as an independent unit ended in 2013 with it was absorbed into GlaxoSmithKline.

Continued Efforts
Also in 2008, Sinclair was on the scientific advisory board of Shaklee, a supplement company selling a product called “Vivix”, a grape-flavored anti-aging supplement.

In the early 2010’s, Sinclair’s existing lab came into money trouble due to budget cuts and smaller grants from the National Institutes of Health, having to cut the amount of researchers from eighteen to four or five.

In 2013 Sinclair published a study claiming that a family of proteins called sirtuins were the cause of aging, and that as they get overwhelmed, and genetic information becomes uninterpretable due to a deficiency in NAD.

In 2018 Sinclair launched Arc Bio, a tech startup created by researchers from Harvard University and Stanford University to develop a disease database to help stop outbreaks and reduce laboratory testing time.

In 2019 Sinclair and journalist Matthew LaPlante released a book entitled “Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don’t Have To”, which discussed not just the medical ways life could be extended, but the societal and ethical implications of such an occurrence.

Research
His research has involved claims that a chemical in red wine called resveratrol extended the life of mice by 24% and by 59% in flies and worms. He also identified genes that made yeast consume fewer calories and live 30% longer. The mice in the study were overweight, yet their longevity was as long as the mice with regular diets.

A drug using resveratrol and other compounds were tested by Sirtris in clinical trials over several years, but a drug that would help with diabetes or other diseases was not identified. As of 2019, Sinclair’s focus is on helping with anti-aging to help alleviate some of the leading causes of illness, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia.

Sinclair estimates that a third of his research colleagues are taking some of their own experimental anti-aging molecules, as they believe the compounds they are presently using and producing will allow people to extend their life spans by ten years.

Sinclair has stated his believe that calorie restrictive diets cause the body to focus on self repair, and that a compound found in cells called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) could be used to induce this repair state in the body.

He even claimed in early 2019 that with the help of his own research, he has “knocked more than two decades off of his biological clock”, and that it might be possible for humans to soon live to 150 years old. Sinclair has tried to commercialize molecules known as “NAD boosters” which he claims help with life span extension. He is an investor in a company called InsideTracker which measures your age.

Personal Life
Sinclair is regarded by some of his colleagues as very persuasive, but sometimes lacking the patience and having too much passion for a scientist. His mentor Leonard Guarente has called him a “bold scientist”, who is willing to take chances and try risky experiments”.

His diet consists of more vegetables than meat, and he always tries to stay “a little bit hungry”.

Awards
Sinclair was honored as one of Time Magazines 100 Most Influential People of 2014.