David Sinclair Longevity Guru’s Failed Businesses

The article is worth a read if you’re interested and ends in this quote.

“Sinclair said he believes that his companies will someday produce life-changing medicines. “Developing medicines that safely and effectively target aging,” he said, “is a difficult endeavor that has turned out to take longer than I expected.”

I cited some of the science for David Sinclair’s book in the chapter on Longevity in my book Radical Resilience.  I discussed him on the blog here here and here.  A youTube on him from last spring is here.

The Illusion of Immortality: David Sinclair’s Rollercoaster Ride Through the Business of Aging

David Sinclair, Harvard geneticist and evangelist of “reversing aging,” is a master of promise and persuasion. His pitch—that aging can be treated like a disease—has attracted over $1 billion in funding for companies aimed at stopping time itself. But, like many tales of visionary ambition, Sinclair’s story is marked by setbacks and skeptical murmurs, lawsuits, and forced resignations from boards.

Since co-founding Sirtris Pharmaceuticals in 2004, Sinclair has repeatedly sold investors on the dream of a longer, healthier life. Sirtris’s key to youth? Resveratrol, the famed “red wine compound.” It sold to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million, but trials failed, and the company shut down. Unfazed, Sinclair moved on. He launched OvaScience, touting fertility tech to “recharge” aging eggs. Valued at $1.3 billion at its peak, it later crumbled. Other ventures like CohBar and Life Biosciences followed a similar script: big ideas, high hopes, and eventual collapse or retrenchment.

Despite the string of failed ventures, Sinclair remains the golden boy of the longevity movement. His presence alone inflates valuations. Consumer products like anti-aging dog chews and “biological age” tests marketed by companies he co-founded have faced backlash from scientists calling them unproven and overhyped.

Yet Sinclair persists, unshaken. “We can reboot the elderly,” he proclaims, comparing himself to the Wright brothers before flight. His critics say he’s overselling hope, but like any good storyteller, he understands the power of a future that feels just one breakthrough away.