His research targets the aging process

David Sinclair has made it his life's mission to delay the inevitable -- or at least make it less debilitating.

"Aging is the worst thing that has ever been put upon humanity," says Sinclair, assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. "When I was 3 years old, I was horrified by the idea that my grandparents would die, and then my parents would die. And then one day I would die."

Sinclair's laboratory garnered headlines last month when it announced findings on the anti-aging effects in mice of resveratrol , a chemical found in red wine. The study showed that high doses of resveratrol prevented mice fed a high-calorie diet from developing warning signs of diabetes and liver problems and prolonged their lives. (Warning: Don't head to the wine store just yet. The concentrations of resveratrol in wine aren't high enough to offer life-extending benefits.)

"I don't care about red wine," says Sinclair. "But I've been working without break for 11 years on this because I realize that it has the potential to revolutionize medicine."

Several years ago scientists learned that cutting calorie intake in mice extends their lives. Sinclair's studies on resveratrol show that the chemical can reproduce those calorie-cutting benefits without any change in diet.

But resveratrol is only the beginning. Sinclair says his lab has designed molecules that are even more potent and could ease the burdens of growing old with lower doses.

"Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, cataracts, Alzheimer's," says Sinclair. "We aim to treat diseases of aging with a single pill. I want to see 90-year-olds play squash with their grandchildren."

Sinclair has cofounded a company, Sirtris, to develop and test such a pill, and he predicts that a limited version will be available in as few as five years. The company has raised $85 million to pursue its research, but Sinclair reckons it will need $300 million to get a product on the market.

"We've come farther than I ever thought we would in my lifetime," he says.

The conquest of aging is no small ambition. Sinclair, however, isn't the picture of hubris. A soft-spoken, slender Australian, Sinclair, 37, grew up in Sydney and received a PhD in molecular biology from the University of New South Wales. Then he sold his car to pay for a ticket to the United States so he could interview for a postdoctoral research fellowship in the MIT lab of Dr. Leonard Guarente, where he immersed himself in yeasts.

"Why don't yeasts live forever?" he asked himself.

In 1997 he and Guarente identified how a specific gene controls the yeasts' aging process. Two years later he started his own laboratory at Harvard with the intention of studying the gene's product, a protein called sirtuin.

"If you eat a high-fat meal, you're turning off your SIRT1 gene, and if you skip a meal you'll turn it on," says Sinclair, referring to the gene that produces sirtuin in mice and humans. He believes that resveratrol activates the same gene, but some scientists are not yet convinced.

"David's work is very important in that it provides evidence that sirtuins function to forestall aging effects," says Guarente. "There's controversy with the calorie restriction idea, but support is growing."

Sinclair's Harvard lab now employs 18 scientists, from oncologists to botanists to synthetic chemists, working on everything from worms to mice to human cells.

He has never forgotten what drew him to molecular biology in the first place. "It's a horrible thing to be given consciousness and mortality at the same time," he says.

And, he said, it's an exciting time to be a molecular biologist.

"We have a grasp finally on how to turn on the body's defenses against aging," says Sinclair. "It's as though we're a year beyond having split the atom."

Hometown: West Roxbury.

Family: Wife, Sandra, who's German ("I dragged her here."); daughters Natalie, 4, and Madeleine, 2.

Hobbies: As a good Australian, Sinclair used to windsurf. Also, he sailed and rollerbladed, but there's no time for that anymore. "When you're sitting on the potential to treat millions of people's diseases, you can't take time off. I'm lucky if I have time to shower."

On government support of research: "It's not sufficient to just pray. You need to do experiments."

On humanity's genetic relatives: "From a gene perspective, we're an upright mouse."