Dr. Michael D. West
Michael D. West, PhD, is a molecular gerontologist and biotechnology entrepreneur, and the Founder and CEO of LifeCraft Sciences. A pioneer in stem cell science, cellular aging, telomerase, and regenerative medicine, he has founded ten biotechnology companies and held senior management roles at six publicly traded firms. He is widely credited with helping found the field of regenerative medicine by leading the first isolation of human pluripotent (embryonic) stem cells, and earlier with cloning the components of telomerase, the enzyme central to cellular aging and cancer.
At LifeCraft Sciences, a biotechnology company based in Richmond, California, Michael leads work in precision cellular reprogramming, applying targeted genes such as telomerase together with developmental regulators to restore aged cells to a youthful, regenerative state.
The company’s core technology, RESTORE, is designed to reset the epigenetic clock, advancing what Michael describes as a new era of age reprogramming with the mission of redesigning life through therapeutics that target the central clocking mechanisms of immortal regeneration. LifeCraft is initially applying its age-reprogramming approach in cosmetic dermatology. Read and watch Super-Longevity & Life Extension Breakthroughs.
Much of Michael’s recent work builds on a unified model of aging and regeneration, in which the same gene-expression changes that suppress cancer over a lifetime also drive a progressive loss of regenerative capacity, and in which reprogramming somatic cells can restore telomerase and embryonic regeneration pathways to reverse that decline. He developed this framework with collaborators including longevity researcher Aubrey de Grey, who served as Vice President of New Technology Discovery at Michael’s company AgeX Therapeutics.
Read Toward a Unified Theory of Aging and Regeneration. Watch Dr. Michael West at EARD22: Novel Therapeutics Targeting Aging, AgeX Therapeutics: Targeting Biological Ageing, and Regenerative Medicine and Aging.
Michael founded and led AgeX Therapeutics between 2018 and 2023, developing therapeutics for conditions related to human aging before the company merged with Serina Therapeutics. From 2007 to 2018, he was CEO of BioTime, Inc. (now Lineage Cell Therapeutics), a regenerative medicine company where he led development of OpRegen, a retinal pigment epithelium cell therapy for dry age-related macular degeneration later licensed to Genentech, along with programs for spinal cord injury and a telomerase-targeting cancer vaccine. In 2014, he also served as CEO of Asterias Biotherapeutics, which was built in part around stem cell assets BioTime had acquired from Geron.
From 1998 to 2007, Michael was CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), later Ocata Therapeutics and now the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where he advanced somatic cell nuclear transfer and stem-cell-derived therapeutics and became a prominent voice in the national debate over therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research, testifying before the United States Senate.
Earlier, between 1990 and 1998, he was the founder, first CEO, and later Chief Scientific Officer of Geron Corporation, the first biotechnology company explicitly created to target human aging. At Geron, he initiated and managed programs in telomere biology, and his team cloned the RNA and catalytic components of telomerase in collaboration with Nobel laureate Thomas Cech.
He also organized the first collaborative effort to isolate human embryonic stem cells, helping fund the research of James Thomson and John Gearhart that achieved that milestone in 1998. For the company’s scientific advisory board, he recruited leading scientists, including Nobel laureates Günter Blobel, Carol Greider, and James Watson.
Michael’s research has long centered on the molecular biology of cellular aging, particularly the role of telomere shortening and telomerase in the replicative senescence first described by Leonard Hayflick. By his own account, his team at Geron demonstrated that introducing telomerase could immortalize human cells in culture using skin cells donated by Hayflick himself. Michael is named as an inventor on roughly 146 United States patents spanning stem cell technology, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.
Michael was born on April 28, 1953, in Niles, Michigan. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology in 1976 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, returned home to help run his family’s business, and then resumed his studies, earning a Master of Science in Biology in 1982 from Andrews University.
After beginning research on the molecular biology of aging in the laboratory of Samuel Goldstein at the University of Arkansas, he completed his PhD in Cell Biology, concentrating on cell senescence, in 1989 at Baylor College of Medicine, working with molecular gerontologist James Smith. He then conducted research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas alongside cell biologists Woodring Wright and Jerry Shay, whose telomere research helped shape his decision to commercialize telomerase science.
Michael is the author of The Immortal Cell: One Scientist’s Quest to Solve the Mystery of Human Aging and has co-edited several academic volumes on cloning, stem cells, and regenerative medicine, including Principles of Cloning, Essentials of Stem Cell Biology, and The Future of Aging: Pathways to Human Life Extension.
A frequent keynote speaker on the biology of aging, he has presented at venues including the World Stem Cell Summit and the Ending Age-Related Diseases conference series. Michael lives in Mill Valley, California.
Read more about his work at the Embryo Project Encyclopedia and the World Stem Cell Summit.
Visit his Homepage and LinkedIn profile, his Wikipedia page, and his ResearchGate profile. Follow him on X.