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L. Jackson Roberts II, MD

Scientific Advisor, Kronos Longevity Research Institute

L. Jackson Roberts serves as Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. He has been with the university since the late 1970s and is recognized as an international thought-leader in the field of free radical biochemistry and its role in health and disease.

His research interests have focused primarily on the biochemistry and pharmacology of lipids. From 1975-1990, most of this research was related to prostaglandins. However, his discovery in 1990 that prostaglandin-like compounds (isoprostanes) are formed in vivo by a non-enzymatic free radical catalyzed mechanism led to a switch in focus to free radical biochemistry and biology with an emphasis on isoprostanes and related compounds that are formed as products of the isoprostane pathway. This discovery has made it possible for researchers to detect and monitor free radical reactions and free radical damage to lipid membranes, something that hadn't been possible before. As a result of his work on isoprostanes, Dr. Roberts received a coveted Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

During his research career to date, he has authored more than 200 original peer-reviewed articles and 115 book chapters and review articles. He serves on a variety of expert advisory panels, review committees and editorial boards, including the NIH Medical Biochemistry Study Section, the Eicosanoid Nomenclature Committee, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) panel on Measurement of Oxidative Stress in Humans. Dr. Roberts is also an associate editor of Prostaglandins and Other Lipid Mediators and the leading journal in the free radical field, Free Radical Biology & Medicine. He is also a past recipient of the coveted Burroughs Wellcome Scholar Award in Clinical Pharmacology.

Dr. Roberts completed his undergraduate education with dual Bachelors of Science in chemistry and biology at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. He was awarded a doctorate in medicine from the University of Iowa, where he was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honorary society. After a rotating internship at Denver General Hospital, he went on to train in internal medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in clinical pharmacology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.