David A Sinclair

David A Sinclair
Harvard University | Harvard · Genetics

Ph.D. Biochemistry and Mol. Biol

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405
Publications
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Publications

Publications (405)
Preprint
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Frailty is an age related geriatric syndrome, for which the mechanisms remain largely unknown. We performed a longitudinal study of aging female (n = 40) and male (n = 47) C57BL/6NIA mice, measured frailty index and derived metabolomics data from plasma samples. We identify differentially abundant metabolites related to aging, determine frailty rel...
Article
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Background Aging is a complex process that involves all tissues in an organism and shows sex dimorphism. While transcriptional changes in aging have been well characterized, the majority of studies have focused on a single sex and sex differences in gene expression in aging are poorly understood. In this study, we explore sex dimorphism in gene exp...
Article
Full-text available
The recent unprecedented progress in ageing research and drug discovery brings together fundamental research and clinical applications to advance the goal of promoting healthy longevity in the human population. We, from the gathering at the Aging Research and Drug Discovery Meeting in 2023, summarised the latest developments in healthspan biotechno...
Article
Small artery remodeling and endothelial dysfunction are hallmarks of hypertension. Growing evidence supports a likely causal association between cardiovascular diseases and the presence of endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EndMT). EC reprogramming represents an innovative strategy in regenerative medicine to prevent deleterious effects induced...
Article
Chemotherapy induced ovarian failure and infertility is an important concern in female cancer patients of reproductive age or younger, and non-invasive, pharmacological approaches to maintain ovarian function are urgently needed. Given the role of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) as an essential cofactor for drug detoxifi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Aging is a complex process that involves all tissues in an organism and shows sex dimorphism. While transcriptional changes in aging have been well characterized, the majority of studies have focused on a single sex and sex differences in gene expression in aging are poorly understood. In this study, we explore sex dimorphism in gene exp...
Preprint
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is essential for many enzymatic reactions, including those involved in energy metabolism, DNA repair and the activity of sirtuins, a family of defensive deacylases. During aging, levels of NAD+ can decrease by up to 50% in some tissues, the repletion of which provides a range of health benefits in both mice a...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Small artery remodeling and endothelial dysfunction are hallmarks of hypertension. Growing evidence supports a likely causal association between cardiovascular diseases and the presence of endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EndMT), a cellular transdifferentiation process in which endothelial cells (ECs) partially lose their identity...
Article
Background and Aims: Chemotherapy induced ovarian failure and infertility is an important concern in female cancer patients of reproductive age or younger, and non-invasive, pharmacological approaches to prevent chemotherapy induced infertility are urgently needed. Here we investigate whether pharmacological elevation of nicotinamide adenine dinucl...
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Epigenetic ‘clocks’ based on DNA methylation have emerged as the most robust and widely used aging biomarkers, but conventional methods for applying them are expensive and laborious. Here we develop tagmentation-based indexing for methylation sequencing (TIME-seq), a highly multiplexed and scalable method for low-cost epigenetic clocks. Using TIME-...
Article
Full-text available
Levels of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) decline by up to 50% in aging. NAD+ is an essential co-factor for many metabolic processes, including the deacetylase activity of sirtuins, and previous studies have demonstrated that supplementing NAD+ levels has a range of health benefits in both mice and humans. Here we investigate the effect of...
Article
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Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in efforts to ameliorate aging and the diseases it causes, with transient expression of nuclear reprogramming factors recently emerging as an intriguing approach. Expression of these factors, either systemically or in a tissue-specific manner, has been shown to combat age-related deterioratio...
Article
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Information storage and retrieval is essential for all life. In biology, information is primarily stored in two distinct ways: the genome, comprising nucleic acids, acts as a foundational blueprint and the epigenome, consisting of chemical modifications to DNA and histone proteins, regulates gene expression patterns and endows cells with specific i...
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Glaucoma, a chronic neurodegenerative disease, is a leading cause of age-related blindness worldwide and characterized by the progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and their axons. Previously, we developed a novel epigenetic rejuvenation therapy, based on the expression of the three transcription factors Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4 (OSK), whic...
Article
The NAD ⁺ ‐dependent deacylase family of sirtuin enzymes have been implicated in biological ageing, late‐life health and overall lifespan, though of these members, a role for sirtuin‐2 (SIRT2) is less clear. Transgenic overexpression of SIRT2 in the BubR1 hypomorph model of progeria can rescue many aspects of health and increase overall lifespan, d...
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Background In 2005, we reported 3 patients with bilateral optic nerve damage early in life. These patients had stable vision for decades but then experienced significant bilateral vision loss with no obvious cause. Our hypothesis, novel at that time, was that the late decline of vision was due to age-related attrition of retinal ganglion cells supe...
Article
The nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+ ) precursor nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) is a proposed therapy for age-related disease, whereby it is assumed that NMN is incorporated into NAD+ through the canonical recycling pathway. During oral delivery, NMN is exposed to the gut microbiome, which could modify the NAD+ metabolome through enzyme a...
Article
A hallmark of eukaryotic aging is a loss of epigenetic information, a process that can be reversed. We have previously shown that the ectopic induction of the Yamanaka factors OCT4, SOX2, and KLF4 (OSK) in mammals can restore youthful DNA methylation patterns, transcript profiles, and tissue function, without erasing cellular identity, a process th...
Article
Reduced expression of the NAD+-dependent deacetylase, SIRT3, has been associated with insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction in humans and rodents. In this study we investigated whether specific overexpression of SIRT3 in vivo in skeletal muscle could prevent HFD-induced muscle insulin resistance. To address this we used a muscle-specific ade...
Article
As the global population faces a progressive shift towards a higher median age, understanding the mechanisms underlying healthy brain ageing has become of paramount importance for the preservation of cognitive abilities. The first part of the present review aims to provide a comprehensive look at the anatomical changes the healthy brain endures wit...
Article
Context: Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) levels decline with aging and age-related decline in NAD has been postulated to contribute to age-related diseases. Objective: We evaluated the safety and physiologic effects of NAD augmentation by administering its precursor, β-nicotinamide mononucleotide (MIB-626, Metro International Biotech, Wo...
Article
All living things experience an increase in entropy, manifested as a loss of genetic and epigenetic information. In yeast, epigenetic information is lost over time due to the relocalization of chromatin-modifying proteins to DNA breaks, causing cells to lose their identity, a hallmark of yeast aging. Using a system called "ICE" (inducible changes t...
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Technological advancements have facilitated the implementation of realistic, terrestrial-based complex 33-beam galactic cosmic radiation simulations (GCR Sim) to now probe central nervous system functionality. This work expands considerably on prior, simplified GCR simulations, yielding new insights into responses of male and female mice exposed to...
Article
Full-text available
Frailty is quantified as the accumulation of health deficits over an organism’s lifetime and gives a measure of the overall health of an organism. Preliminary studies have found an association between frailty and some of the hallmarks of aging including inflammation and senescence. However, the molecular underpinnings of frailty, and whether the me...
Article
Full-text available
People living with HIV (PLWH) are disproportionately burdened with multimorbidity and decline in physiologic function compared to their uninfected counterparts, but biological mechanisms that differentially contribute to the decline in muscle function in PLWH compared to uninfected people remains understudied. The study site was Brigham and Women’s...
Article
Full-text available
Naturally produced peptides (<100 amino acids) are important regulators of physiology, development, and metabolism. Recent studies have predicted that thousands of peptides may be translated from transcripts containing small open reading frames (smORFs). Here, we describe two peptides in Drosophila encoded by conserved smORFs, Sloth1 and Sloth2. Th...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Cancer survivors often face infertility as a result of ovarian toxicity from cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs, which trigger a cascade of events ultimately causing follicular reserve exhaustion and endocrine disruption. Apart from infertility, this can have severe consequences on women’s health with early-onset menopause and a decline in bo...
Article
Sirtuins are NAD+-dependent protein deacylases involved in metabolic regulation and aging-related diseases. Specific activators for seven human Sirtuin isoforms would be important chemical tools and potential therapeutic drugs. Activators have been described for Sirt1 and act via a unique N-terminal domain of this isoform. For most other Sirtuin is...
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Sirtuins are a family of proteins that protect against cellular injury and aging; understanding their evolution should reveal fundamental mechanisms governing longevity. “Early-branching” animals such as sea sponges and jellyfish have been understudied in previous analyses of sirtuin diversity. These organisms not only hold important positions at t...
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Epigenetic clocks allow us to accurately predict the age and future health of individuals based on the methylation status of specific CpG sites in the genome and are a powerful tool to measure the effectiveness of longevity interventions. There is a growing need for methods to efficiently construct epigenetic clocks. The most common approach is to...
Article
Full-text available
Heart failure (HF) is the inability of the heart to pump blood sufficiently to meet the metabolic demands of the body. HF with reduced systolic function is characterized by cardiac hypertrophy, ventricular fibrosis and remodeling, and decreased cardiac contractility, leading to cardiac functional impairment and death. Transverse aortic constriction...
Article
Full-text available
Although chronological age correlates with various age-related diseases and conditions, it does not adequately reflect an individual's functional capacity, well-being, or mortality risk. In contrast, biological age provides information about overall health and indicates how rapidly or slowly a person is aging. Estimates of biological age are though...
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The Frailty Inferred Geriatric Health Timeline (FRIGHT) and Analysis of Frailty and Death (AFRAID) clocks were developed to predict biological age and lifespan respectively, in mice. Their utility within the context of polypharmacy (≥5 medications), which is very common in older adults, is unknown. In male C57BL/6J(B6) mice administered chronic pol...
Article
The mitochondrial enzyme SIRT3 is an NAD⁺-dependent deacetylase important in cell metabolism, and a decline in its protein expression or activity has been linked with insulin resistance in obesity, ageing and type-2-diabetes. While studies in SIRT3 knockout mice have dramatically improved our understanding of the function of SIRT3, the impact of in...
Preprint
Full-text available
Epigenetic clocks allow the accurate prediction of age based on the methylation status of specific CpG sites in a variety of tissues. These predictive models can be used to distinguish the biological age of an organism from its chronological age, and are a powerful tool to measure the effectiveness of aging interventions. There is a growing need fo...
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Organismal ageing is accompanied by progressive loss of cellular function and systemic deterioration of multiple tissues, leading to impaired function and increased vulnerability to death. Mitochondria have become recognized not merely as being energy suppliers but also as having an essential role in the development of diseases associated with agei...
Article
Background: People living with HIV (PLWH) are disproportionately burdened with multimorbidity and decline in physiologic function compared with their uninfected counterparts, but biological mechanisms that differentially contribute to the decline in muscle function in PLWH compared with uninfected people remain understudied. Setting: The study s...
Article
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD⁺), as an emerging regulator of immune responses during viral infections may be a promising therapeutic target for COVID-19. In this Opinion, we suggest that interventions that boost NAD⁺ levels might promote antiviral defense and suppress uncontrolled inflammation. We discuss the association between low NAD⁺ c...
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Aging is the single largest risk factor for most chronic diseases, and thus possesses large socioeconomic interest to continuously aging societies. Consequently, the field of aging research is expanding alongside a growing focus from the industry and investors in aging research. This year's 8th Annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) meetin...
Article
Maintaining genomic integrity and stability is crucial for life; yet, no tissue-driven mechanism that robustly safeguards the epithelial genome has been discovered. Epidermal stem cells (EpiSCs) continuously replenish the stratified layers of keratinocytes that protect organisms against various environmental stresses. To study the dynamics of DNA-d...
Preprint
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Epigenetic "clocks" based on DNA methylation (DNAme) are the most robust and widely employed aging biomarker. They have been built for numerous species and reflect gold-standard interventions that extend lifespan. However, conventional methods for measuring epigenetic clocks are expensive and low-throughput. Here, we describe T agmentation-based I...
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Calorie restriction (CR) extends lifespan and retards age-related chronic diseases in most species. There is growing evidence that the gut microbiota has a pivotal role in host health and age-related pathological conditions. Yet, it is still unclear how CR and the gut microbiota are related to healthy aging. Here, we report findings from a small lo...
Article
Heart failure (HF) is defined as an inability of the heart to pump blood sufficiently to meet the metabolic demands of the body. HF with systolic dysfunction is caused by a progressive decline in contractile function and chronic hemodynamic overload, and characterized by ventricular hypertrophy and remodeling, neurohormonal compensation mechanisms,...
Article
Full-text available
Developments in life expectancy and the growing emphasis on biological and ‘healthy’ aging raise a number of important questions for health scientists and economists alike. Is it preferable to make lives healthier by compressing morbidity, or longer by extending life? What are the gains from targeting aging itself compared to efforts to eradicate s...
Preprint
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19 20 Calorie restriction (CR) extends lifespan and retards age-related chronic diseases in most 21 species. There is growing evidence that the gut microbiota has a pivotal role in host health 22 and age-related pathological conditions. Yet, it is still unclear how CR and the gut microbiota 23 are related to healthy aging. Here we report findings f...
Preprint
Heart failure (HF) is defined as an inability of the heart to pump blood adequately to meet the body's metabolic demands. HF with reduced systolic function is characterized by cardiac hypertrophy, ventricular fibrosis and remodeling, and decreased cardiac contractility, leading to cardiac functional impairment and death. Transverse aortic constrict...
Chapter
Metabolic flexibility is vital for organisms to respond to and survive changes in energy availability. A critical metabolic flexibility regulator is peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ coactivator 1α (PGC-1α), which regulates various transcription factors and nuclear receptors that, in turn, regulate mitochondrial homeostasis and fatty aci...
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The molecular characterization of extracellular vesicles (EVs) has revealed a great heterogeneity in their composition at a cellular and tissue level. Current isolation methods fail to efficiently separate EV subtypes for proteomic and functional analysis. The aim of this study was to develop a reproducible and scalable isolation workflow to increa...
Article
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Human stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles (EV) provide many advantages over cell-based therapies for the treatment of functionally compromised tissue beds and organ sites. Here we sought to determine whether human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived EV could resolve in part, the adverse late normal tissue complications associated with exposure...
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Aging is emerging as a druggable target with growing interest from academia, industry and investors. New technologies such as artificial intelligence and advanced screening techniques, as well as a strong influence from the industry sector may lead to novel discoveries to treat age-related diseases. The present review summarizes presentations from...
Article
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Currently, no pharmacotherapy has been proven effective in treating photoreceptor degeneration in patients. Discovering readily available and safe neuroprotectants is therefore highly sought after. Here, we investigated nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), a precursor of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), in a retinal detachment (RD) induced p...
Article
Full-text available
Adjustment of cerebral blood flow (CBF) to neuronal activity via neurovascular coupling (NVC) has an essential role in maintenance of healthy cognitive function. In aging increased oxidative stress and cerebromicrovascular endothelial dysfunction impair NVC, contributing to cognitive decline. There is increasing evidence showing that a decrease in...
Article
Full-text available
The Geometric Framework for Nutrition (GFN) has revealed that ad-libitum low-protein, high-carbohydrate (LPHC) diets improve cardiometabolic health and extend lifespan in rodents, but it is not known whether these diets are also beneficial for brain health. Here, we utilized previous results from GFN studies and compared hippocampus biology and mem...
Article
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Ageing is a degenerative process that leads to tissue dysfunction and death. A proposed cause of ageing is the accumulation of epigenetic noise that disrupts gene expression patterns, leading to decreases in tissue function and regenerative capacity1–3. Changes to DNA methylation patterns over time form the basis of ageing clocks⁴, but whether olde...
Article
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An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Preprint
Full-text available
Treatment with nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) is a prominent strategy to address the age-related decline in nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) levels for maintaining aspects of late-life health. It is assumed that exogenous NMN is directly incorporated into the NAD+ metabolome in mammals via the canonical recycling pathway. Here, we show t...
Article
Full-text available
The identification of genes and interventions that slow or reverse aging is hampered by the lack of non-invasive metrics that can predict the life expectancy of pre-clinical models. Frailty Indices (FIs) in mice are composite measures of health that are cost-effective and non-invasive, but whether they can accurately predict health and lifespan is...
Preprint
Full-text available
Treatment with nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) is a prominent strategy to address the age-related decline in nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD ⁺ ) levels for maintaining aspects of late-life health. It is assumed that exogenous NMN is directly incorporated into NAD ⁺ in mammals by the canonical recycling pathway, however the need for NAD ⁺ i...
Article
Full-text available
Hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is a leading cause of organ dysfunction and failure in numerous pathological and surgical settings. At the core of this issue lies mitochondrial dysfunction. Hence, strategies that prime mitochondria towards damage resilience might prove applicable in a clinical setting. A promising approach has been to ind...
Preprint
Full-text available
Naturally produced peptides (<100 amino acids) are important regulators of physiology, development, and metabolism. Recent studies have predicted that thousands of peptides may be translated from transcripts containing small open reading frames (smORFs). Here, we describe two previously uncharacterized peptides in Drosophila encoded by conserved sm...
Article
Full-text available
In this issue of EMBO Molecular Medicine, Stebbing et al validate an artificial intelligence-assisted prediction that a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis could be a potent weapon against COVID-19. Using liver organoids infected with SARS-CoV-2, they confirm dual antiviral and anti-inflammatory activities, and show that its administration in f...