Steve Horvath
Biostatistician and geneticist who built the first pan-tissue epigenetic clock, a DNA methylation test that estimates biological age, and co-developed the network method WGCNA
Principal investigator, Altos Labs · Professor of Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine, and of Biostatistics, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (faculty since 2000) · ScD in Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health (2000) · PhD in Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1995) · Diplom in Mathematics and Physics, Technische Universität Berlin (1989)
Cells carry chemical tags on their DNA, called methyl groups, and the pattern of these tags shifts with age in a predictable way. An epigenetic clock reads the pattern at selected sites and turns it into an age estimate. In HOR2021, Steve Horvath and colleagues, with Adam Salmon's group in San Antonio, built two such clocks for the blood of common marmosets, small short-lived monkeys used in aging research. One clock, trained on both human and marmoset data, also tracked age reasonably well in vervet monkeys and rhesus macaques. In a separate group of marmosets they asked whether rapamycin, the mTOR-blocking drug that lengthens life in mice, would make blood look younger by this measure. The clocks did not detect a significant change. This is a null result for one biomarker in blood; it does not show that rapamycin has no effect on aging in marmosets.
Horvath trained first in mathematics and physics at the Technische Universität Berlin, took a PhD in mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995 and an ScD in biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2000. He joined UCLA that year as a professor of human genetics and of biostatistics. With members of his lab he developed weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA), a widely used method for finding groups of genes that act together. In 2013 he published the Horvath clock, a DNA methylation age estimator that works across nearly all tissues and cell types, and he co-founded the non-profit Clock Foundation.
He is now a principal investigator at Altos Labs, a company that studies cell rejuvenation, and is still listed as a professor at UCLA.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | A | DNA methylation age analysis of rapamycin in common marmosets. HOR2021 First author: built marmoset epigenetic clocks for blood and found no significant effect of rapamycin on epigenetic age. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 2
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Steve Horvath.
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- Adam B. Salmon Biologist of aging at UT Health San Antonio whose work in this Atlas spans rapamycin in mice and in common marmosets. He is a co-author on the Interventions Testing Program reports from the San Antonio site and on the marmoset rapamycin studies on blood markers, epigenetic age and the salivary gland
- Julie A. Mattison Primate aging researcher at the US National Institute on Aging who led the NIA study of calorie restriction in rhesus monkeys and its comparison with the Wisconsin study
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