I cannot begin to express my love and gratitude to my wife, Sandra Luikenhuis, who has stood by me for two decades and tolerated my writing and rewriting this book for one of them. To my children, Alex, Natalie, and Benjamin: I could not have asked for better offspring.
Writing a book requires considerable kinship among all those involved in the creative process. I’m indebted to Matthew LaPlante for his friendship, sense of humor, and polymath’s ability to turn hundreds of discussions and dozens of whiteboard diagrams into a coherent narrative. Matt and I are both so lucky to have worked with Caity Delphia, this book’s masterful and veracious illustrator, who bravely took on the challenge to turn our words and ideas into stunning works of art—and pulled it off. Every day I’m thankful for the camaraderie of Susan DeStefano, my assistant for the past fourteen years who keeps my life and our labs running smoothly; she deserves an entire page of thanks for her ability to handle all that’s thrown at her.
I’m indebted to Luis Rajman and Karolina Chwalek, who help run the research lab in Boston, and Lindsay Wu, who runs our sister lab in Sydney. I’m fortunate to work with such a dedicated, intelligent, and practical team. Bruce Yankner, my co-director at Harvard’s Glenn Center for Aging Research, has been a wonderful collaborator and colleague.
My deep and heartfelt thanks to Celeste Fine, John Maas, and Laurie Bernstein, my agents; to Sarah Pelz, our editor, for her careful and skillful editing; to Melanie Iglesias Pérez and Lisa Sciamba; to Lynn Anderson for copyediting; and all the staff at Simon & Schuster who believed in this book. Thanks to Laura Tucker for beginning this journey a decade ago; to the public relations team Carrie Cook, Sandi Mendelson, Rob Mohr, and Nicholas Platt. Matt and I are so thankful to everyone who read and made suggestions to improve the manuscript, especially Stephen Dark, who coedited the glossary and endnotes, Mark Jones, Sandra Luikenhuis, Mehmood Kahn, John Kempler, Lise Kempler, Tristan Edwards, Emil and Dariel Liathovetski (the RockCellos), Dave Deamer, Terri Sinclair, Andrew Sinclair, and Nick Sinclair. My appreciation to Brigitte Lacombe, master photographer, for the unkempt headshot (Instagram brigittelacombe).
Thanks to all the teams that work tirelessly to make this world a better place, including and in order of incorporation, CohBar, Vium, InsideTracker, MetroBiotech, Arc Bio, Liberty Biosecurity, Dovetail Genomics, Life Biosciences, Continuum Biosciences, Jumpstart Fertility, Senolytic Therapeutics, Animal Biosciences, Spotlight Therapeutics, Selphagy Therapeutics, and Iduna Therapeutics.
When I chose to be a scientist, I thought that the greatest reward would be discovering things, but it’s actually the lifelong friends you make, the ones who stand up for you when times are tough. So I am grateful to have the friendship and receive the wise counsel of Nir Barzilai, Rafael de Cabo, Stephen Helfand, Edward Schulak, Jason Anderson, Todd Dickinson, Raj Apte, Anthony Sauve, David Livingston, Peter Elliott, Darren Higgins, Mark Boguski, Carlos Bustamante, Tristan Edwards, Lindsay Wu, Bruce Ksander, Meredith Gregory Ksander, Zhigang He, Michelle Berman, Pinchas “Hassy” Cohen, Mark Tatar, Alice Park, Sri Devi Narasimhan, Kyle Landry, James Watson, David Ewing Duncan, Joseph Maroon, John Henry, Duncan Purvis, Li-Huei Tsai, Christoph Westphal, Rich Aldrich, Michelle Dipp, Bracken Darrell, Charles de Portes, Stuart Gibson, Adam Neumann, Adi Neumann, Ari Emanuel, Vonda Shannon, Joel and Cathy Sohn, Alejandro Quiroz Zarate, Mathilde Thomas, Bertrand Thomas, Joseph Vercauteren, Nicholas Wade, Karen Weintraub, Jay Mitchell, Marcia Haigis, Amy Wagers, Yang Shi, Raul Mostoslavsky, Tom Rando, Jennifer Cermak, Phil Lambert, Bruce Szczepankiewicz, Ekat Peheva, Matt Easterday, Rob Mohr, Kyle Meetze, Joanna Schulak, Ricardo Godinez, Pablo Costa, Andreas Pfenning, Fernando Fontove, Abraham Solis, Jaques Estaban, Carlos Sermeño and the entire C3 team, Peter Buchthal, Mark Tatar, Dean Ornish, Margaret Morris, Peter Smith, David Le Couteur, Thomas Watson, Kyle Landry, Meredith Carpenter, Margaret Morris, Steven Simpson, Mark Sumich, Adam Hanft, David Chin, Jim Cole, Ed Green, Phil Lambert, Shally Bhasin, Lawrence Gozlan, Daniel Kraft, Mark Hyman, Marc Hodosh, Felipe Sierra, Michael Sistenic, Bob Kain, David Coomber, Ken Rideout, Bob Bass, Tim Bass, John Monsky, Jose Morey, Michael Bonkowski, David Gold, Matt Westfall, Julia Dimon, Richard Hersey, Joe Hockey, Bjarke Ingels, Margo McInnes, Joe Rogan, Mhairi Anderson, Lon Augustenborg, Mike Harris, Sean Riley, Greg Keeley, Ari Patrinos, Andy, Henny, Ian, Josh, and all the other special people who have served and risked their lives to make the world a better place. To everyone I’ve worked with over the years: thank you for the encouragement and inspiration to keep working on this book. I am deeply indebted to those who took the time to be my mentors: my grandmother Vera; my father, Andrew; my mother, Diana; my uncle and aunt Barry and Anne Webb; my PhD mentors, Ian Dawes, Richard Dickinson, and Jeff Kornfeld; my postdoc mentor, Lenny Guarente; and my Harvard mentors, Peter Howley, George Church, and Cliff Tabin, and everyone who’s stood up for and supported our research.
My lab and its research would not have been possible without the support of grants from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, an Australian graduate fellowship, the US National Institutes of Health, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, Mark Collins, Leonard Judson and Kevin Lee at the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the American Federation for Aging Research, Caudalie, Hood Foundation, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Lawrence Ellison Medical Foundation, Hank and Elenor Rasnow, Vincent Giampapa, and Edward Schulak. I’m so very grateful to the hundreds of donors, both large and small, who have contributed to our lab’s research.
And finally, I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the vision, wisdom, and kindness of Paul Glenn, whose funding of aging research will change the world.
While I truly value my professional partnership with David, I absolutely treasure our friendship, and I am so grateful to have him in my life. I am also deeply appreciative of Sandra, Alex, Natalie, and Ben Sinclair, who always treated me like family when I was in Boston, and of Susan DeStefano, who always greeted me with a hug at Harvard. I am in debt to the researchers in David’s lab and to the leaders and employees of the companies in which David is involved for their kindness and patience during my visits. I would not have known any of these amazing people if not for my truly amazing agent, Trena Keating. Most of all, I am grateful to my wife, Heidi, and our daughter, Mia, who lifted me up through the simultaneous writing of two books.