Philippe Horvath

Philippe Horvath (born April 17, 1970 ) is a French biologist who works for the biotechnology division of the DuPont Group. His work laid the foundations for the development of the CRISPR / Cas system , a biochemical method for targeted genetic manipulation .

Live and act

After attending school in Colmar and military service in Coëtquidan and the German Achern , Horvath began studying cell and molecular biology at the University of Strasbourg . Here he obtained a master’s degree in 1996 and a Ph.D. in 2000. After graduating, he went to the research and development department of the food division of the chemical company Rhodia (formerly Rhône-Poulenc ) in Dangé-Saint-Romain . In 2004 the division was taken over by Danisco France, where Horvath was promoted to Senior Scientist . In 2011 the department was sold to DuPont , where Horvath has been an Associate to the DuPont Fellows Forum since 2014 .

Horvath studied bacteria with the aim of improving the shelf life of starter cultures for making cheese and ice cream. In particular, the infestation of these cultures with viruses, the bacteriophages , causes disrupted processes in the food industry. Horvath researched certain sections in the genome of the bacteria, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats ( CRISPR ), between which sections of the DNA of those bacteriophages that had previously infected the bacteria were found, which protected the bacteria against renewed infestation by these viruses . Horvath and co-workers have now manipulated the DNA of certain streptococci by inserting sequences of viral DNA into the CRISPR sections, making the streptococci resistant to these bacteriophages.

Due to the fundamental importance of this work for the development of the CRISPR / Cas system , a method for genetic manipulation that is relatively easy to control, Horvath was one of the most cited scientists in his field in 2015 according to the analyzes by Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Research . Also in 2015 he was awarded the Massry Prize for his work - together with Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier . In 2016 Horvath was one of the winners of the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize and the Canada Gairdner International Award . For 2018 he received the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science of the Franklin Institute awarded.

Web links

• Philippe Horvath at ORCID
• Philippe Horvath at Researcher ID
• Philippe Horvath at the Copains d'avant social network
• Massry winners helped launch gene editing revolution. In: keck.usc.edu. October 8, 2015, accessed October 13, 2015 .