Dr. William Andrews is one of the top longevity experts in the world and has been on a mission to reverse aging since he was 10 years old. Dr. Andrews is the founder of the biotechnology company Sierra Sciences.
He has worked in the biotech industry for over 34 years focused on extending the human lifespan and has a Ph.D. in Molecular and Population Genetics.
Dr. Andrews was a Senior Scientist and Director at several large corporations. In 1997, he led the team at Geron Corporation to be the first to successfully identify human telomerase and was awarded 2nd place as “National Inventor of the Year”.
FUN FACT:
Dr. Andrews is an ultramarathon runner. He has run races 138 miles long.
In 2008 and 2009 completed the Badwater Ultramarathon.
He did 135 mile race in Death Valley with temp 120 degrees plus
Background:
Dr. William Andrews, Ph.D. is a molecular biologist and gerontologist whose career has centered on searching for a cure for human aging. Andrews is the founder and president of the biotechnology company Sierra Sciences. In 1994, he led the team at Geron Corporation that was the first to successfully identify human telomerase.
In 1993, Andrews went to an anti-aging conference at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he met Calvin Harley of Geron Corporation. Harley gave a speech on the subject of telomeres and telomerase and on the possible connection between telomeres and aging. Harley mentioned that no one had yet been successful in cloning telomerase in human beings.
After the speech, Andrews approached Harley and told him that he could clone human telomerase for Geron in three months. Harley took him up on this offer and hired Andrews as Geron’s Director of Molecular Biology. Three months and seventeen days later, Andrews’ team successfully cloned the RNA component of telomerase (“hTR”). For this discovery, Andrews and members of his team were awarded second place for “National Inventor of the Year” in 1997 . Andrews’ team later co-discovered the protein component of human telomerase (“hTERT”) as well.[1][5]
Further experiments by Andrews and his team demonstrated that the protein component of telomerase was inducible, and that when the gene for that component was inserted into normal human skin cells, they could divide past the Hayflick limit and essentially stopped exhibiting replicative senescence, a likely cause of aging. Years later, these cells were deemed immortal.
In 1999, Andrews founded Sierra Sciences in Reno, Nevada, to capitalize on his discoveries at Geron, with the specific goal of curing human aging. Dr. Andrews assembled a team to search for a small molecule that would bind to the telomerase repressor, causing the body to constitutively express telomerase in the presence of that molecule.
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