About
Leonard Guarente, PhD is Elysium Health's Co-Founder and Chief Scientist and the Novartis Professor of Biology at MIT, where he directs the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research. His lab is central to sirtuin and NAD+ aging biology, including work identifying SIR2 as a longevity regulator and showing that sirtuins are NAD+-dependent enzymes. He co-founded Elysium in 2014 with Eric Marcotulli and Dan Alminana, giving the company a direct link to MIT aging-biology research.
What to Know
Signature approach
Guarente's role is scientific foundation. Basis connects to his lab's NAD+/sirtuin body of work, while Index follows Elysium's broader pattern of taking academic aging-biology methods into consumer products. His presence gives Elysium a direct line to MIT biology instead of a purely commercial supplement or testing posture.
What sets them apart
- Sirtuin/NAD+ lineage. Guarente's work helped define the field that made NAD+ biology central to consumer longevity.
- MIT Glenn Center role. He directs a major academic aging-biology center while serving as Elysium's Chief Scientist.
- Scientific family tree. David Sinclair, Brian K. Kennedy, and Matt Kaeberlein trained in his lab.
- Publication scale. Semantic Scholar listed roughly 332 publications, h-index 137, and about 85K citations at capture.
Affiliations
Co-Founder
Thought Leadership
Books
- Ageless Quest: One Scientist's Search for Genes That Prolong Youth · Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2003
Publications
- Transcriptional silencing and longevity protein Sir2 is an NAD-dependent histone deacetylase · Nature, 2000
- Requirement of NAD and SIR2 for life-span extension by calorie restriction in Saccharomyces cerevisiae · Science, 2000
- Increased dosage of a sir-2 gene extends lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans · Nature, 2001
- Mutation in the silencing gene SIR4 can delay aging in S. cerevisiae · Cell, 1995
- Sirt1 promotes fat mobilization in white adipocytes by repressing PPAR-gamma · Nature, 2004
Media Appearances
- Scientist at Work: Leonard Guarente; Searching for Genes to Slow the Hands of Biological Time · The New York Times · 2000-09-26
- The Enthusiast · MIT Technology Review · 2007-08-15
- An MIT Scientist Claims That This Pill Is the Fountain of Youth · New York Magazine · 2016
- In Profile: Leonard Guarente · MIT News · 2009-09-15
Notable Collaborators
- David Sinclair, PhD · Postdoc in Guarente lab (1993); now Harvard Medical School aging biologist
- Brian K. Kennedy, PhD · Doctoral student in Guarente lab; aging biologist (NUS, formerly Buck Institute)
- Matt Kaeberlein, PhD · Doctoral student in Guarente lab; aging biologist (formerly UW; Optispan)
- Cynthia Kenyon, PhD · Co-founder of Elixir Pharmaceuticals (1999) and parallel pioneer of aging genetics
Other specialists at Elysium Health
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