Michael D. West


Michael D. West is a gerontologist, and a pioneer in stem cells, cellular aging and telomerase. He is the founder and CEO of AgeX Therapeutics,
a startup focused on the field of interventional gerontology.

Career

Prior to joining BioTime, West was Chairman of the Board, Chief Scientific Officer and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, another biotechnology company focused on stem cell research. ACT later changed its name to Ocata Therapeutics, and was acquired by Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma for US$379M or $8.50 per share in February 2016.
Prior that, West was founder, director, and Chief Scientific officer of Geron, for which he secured venture capital investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Venrock and Domain Associates. At Geron, West initiated and managed programs in telomere biology relating to aging, cancer and human embryonic stem cell technology.
West organized the first collaborative effort to isolate human pluripotent stem cells for the purpose of manufacturing products in regenerative medicine in collaboration with James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, John Gearhart at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Roger Pedersen at the University of California, San Francisco.
In their telomerase research, West and colleagues at Geron cloned the RNA component of telomerase and collaborated with Thomas Cech, with whom they cloned the catalytic component of the enzyme telomerase, and sponsored collaborative research in the laboratory of Carol Greider, then at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Geron published evidence of the role of telomerase in cancer and cell immortalization in collaboration with Woodring Wright and Jerry Shay at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
For the company's Scientific and Clinical Advisory Board, he recruited Günter Blobel, Leonard Hayflick, Carol Greider, James Watson, and others.
West has been a keynote speaker at events including World Stem Cell and is associated with 146 patents in the United States, Australia, Japan and elsewhere.

Books

West has authored and co-edited books on topics including animal cloning, aging, gerontology, stem cells, stem cell biology, and regenerative medicine.