David Gems
David Herbert Gems is a British geneticist who studies aging. He is a Professor of Biogerontology at University College London (UCL) and the Research Director of the UCL Institute of Healthy Ageing.
Born in 1960 in Weybridge, Surrey, Gems attended Dartington Hall School and earned a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Sussex in 1983. After working abroad in Central America and the United States, he returned to the UK to pursue a PhD in Genetics at the University of Glasgow, which he completed in 1990. His doctoral work looked at the development of Aspergillus nidulans under advisor A. J. Clutterbuck.
In 1993 Gems moved to the University of Missouri to study aging in the worm C. elegans in Don Riddle’s lab, including work on the daf-2 gene that influences lifespan. He set up his own lab at UCL in 1997 with a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. In 2007, he helped establish the Institute of Healthy Ageing at UCL with Dame Linda Partridge and support from the Wellcome Trust; he became a full Professor in 2012 and the IHA’s Director in 2019.
Gems’ research uses C. elegans and other models to uncover what causes aging. He helped show that insulin/IGF-1 signaling affects aging in other animals, including fruit flies and mice. He challenged the idea that aging is mainly caused by molecular damage like oxidative stress, contributing to a shift in the field around 2008–2009. From 2013 onward, he has explored programmatic theories of aging—ideas that aging results from planned, developmental processes rather than just damage. He has questioned concepts such as the hallmarks of aging and cellular senescence, advocating for broader, multifactorial explanations. He has also explored ideas about programmed adaptive death in colonial organisms and reproductive strategies in C. elegans, and he writes about the ethics of aging research and interventions. He has been working on a book about developments in aging science.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:05 (CET).