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Bill Andrews, Ph.D., Sierra Sciences’ and Sierra Holdings founder and CEO, is a scientist, athlete and executive who is known for pushing the envelope and for challenging convention.
Dr. Bill Andrews is the Founder and CEO of Sierra Science and Sierra Holdings, a company focused on finding ways to extend human lifespan and health span through telomere maintenance. Telomeres are found at the tips of our chromosomes and have been shown, in thousands of scientific peer-reviewed studies, to be the clock of aging in humans. When telomeres get shorter, we get older, and our health declines.
As a scientist, athlete, and executive, Bill continually pushes the envelope and challenges convention. He has been featured in Popular Science, The Today Show, and numerous documentaries on the topic of life extension including, most recently, the movie The Immortalists in which he co-stars with Dr. Aubrey de Grey. See www.theimmortalists.com/watch. Bill is known for being a scientist first, focusing on scientific research, allowing others, instead, to market the products that his company discovers.
Bill has been a medical researcher in biotech since 1981, focusing on cancer, heart disease, and inflammation research, though his passion has always been aging. In the early-to-mid 1990s, while at Geron Corporation, Bill led the research to discover both the RNA and protein components of the human enzyme called telomerase. This enzyme is responsible for preventing telomeres from shortening in human reproductive cells, and this is why our children are born younger than we are even though they come from our old cells. Inducing this enzyme to lengthen telomeres in all our cells, not just our reproductive cells, to reverse aging and declining health due to aging, is the principal goal of Sierra Holdings.
Sierra Holdings does not do research on animals, choosing to focus primarily on humans. Nonetheless, other labs using Sierra Holdings technologies have shown that lengthening telomeres, using the enzyme telomerase, can provide significant health benefits including reversal of aging and declining health in every way imaginable. An interview by Diane Sawyer describes the results from an animal study done at Harvard. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np7cR7Z6UGA. Bill is presently conducting a clinical study on humans using the same technologies applied successfully to animals.
Bill was awarded 2nd place as “National Inventor of the Year” in 1997 for his cancer research. Bill earned his Ph.D. in Molecular and Population Genetics at the University of Georgia in 1981. He then served as Senior Scientist at Armos Corporation and Codon Corporation, Director of Molecular Biology at Berlex Biosciences and at Geron Corporation, and Director of Technology Development at EOS Biosciences, before starting Sierra Sciences in 1999 where he now serves as President & CEO as well as Chief Scientific Officer. Bill is also a named inventor on over 50+ US-issued patents on telomerase and author of numerous scientific research studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Bill is also an avid ultra-marathon runner. He regularly competes in 50 and 100+ mile races often finishing at the top of his age group. These grueling races have taken him all over the world to race in some of the most extreme environments, from Death Valley to the Himalayas. His running is presently featured in the movie The High. See www.thehighdoc.com. He considers endurance exercise, when done properly, to be a way to significantly slow down the aging process. Bill’s obsession is to cure aging, and that includes his own aging. His regimen to slow down his own aging and declining health is unique and based on years of his own research.
Bill does not pursue the public spotlight and only does so when it provides funding for his research.
Sierra Holdings’ website (www.sierra-holdings.com) includes videos of him speaking to medical audiences and general public audiences. Links to some are listed below. He has also written three easy-to-read books to explain the field of telomere biology since there is a lot of misunderstanding about this field. His books are also available through his website and below. Finally, marketing partners that sell products discovered at Sierra Holdings are presented on this web site. Royalties that Sierra Holdings earns from the sale of these products are used to support Sierra Sciences and Sierra Holdings research.