PRICE LAB
Lab focus
At the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the Price lab works to elucidate the drivers of aging and age-related diseases, with the goal of developing innovative strategies to promote healthspan and longevity. Our research will focus on three key areas, each holding promise for transformative breakthroughs.
Scientific Wellness to Unlock Longer, Healthier Lives
We will harness the power of big data, deep phenotyping, and longitudinal monitoring to unravel the complex interplay between genetics, environment, and lifestyle across the human lifespan. This comprehensive approach will illuminate the mechanisms through which aging-related diseases emerge, enabling us to develop personalized strategies for prevention and intervention. Our work will pave the way for a new approach to medicine, extending healthy years of life. I recently wrote a book with Lee Hood (Harvard Press, 2023) detailing this future, which we call The Age of Scientific Wellness.
Digital Twins and the ’N of 1' Analyzer: Optimizing Healthspan for Each Individual
Our team will develop cutting-edge digital twin simulators and an N-of-1 Analyzer capable of interpreting an individual's current health status and providing personalized optimization plans. By leveraging AI and extensive longitudinal datasets, we aim to surpass the current limitations in diagnostic accuracy, ushering in an era of truly personalized medicine. Our innovative approach will transform how we understand and treat aging on an individual level.
AI and Systems Biology to Decipher Aging
The Price lab will be at the forefront of leveraging the latest advancements in AI, including large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, and combining these with systems biology models to accelerate breakthroughs in healthy longevity. These cutting-edge tools will enable us to develop sophisticated models and simulations that integrate vast amounts of multi-omic data, uncover hidden patterns, predict disease trajectories, and identify novel therapeutic strategies. The convergence of big data in biology, systems biology models, and AI will be key to unlocking the secrets of aging and developing personalized interventions that extend both healthspan and lifespan.
Why it matters
The grandest of challenges in biology and medicine is how to eliminate age-related disease, enabling radical extension of human healthspan. The greatest convergence of technological advancement is now underway with the advancement of AI and its application to enhancing our lives where it matters most. Our lab seeks to be at the heart of this grand challenge at the cutting edge of the application of AI, systems biology, and big data to the extension of human healthspan.
The future of aging research is personalized. We're working towards tailored strategies that optimize individual healthspan.
Nathan Price, PhD
LAB DETAILS
The Price lab is grateful to have received funding from many sources over the years, including the National Institute of Aging (NIA), Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), American Cancer Society, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Amgen, Merck, Genentech and others.
Dr. Nathan Price is Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Human Healthspan at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. His academic career includes previous positions as Professor and Associate Director of the Institute for Systems Biology, and Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Price holds affiliate faculty status at the University of Washington in Bioengineering and Computer Science & Engineering. Dr. Price has authored over 210 peer-reviewed publications and delivered more than 250 talks and keynotes.
His work has garnered numerous accolades. In 2019, he was named one of 10 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine, and in 2021 he was appointed to the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). Additional recognition includes an NSF CAREER award, being named a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and receiving the 2016 Grace A. Goldsmith Award for his work in pioneering “scientific wellness.” He is also a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and was Chair of the NIH Study Section on Modeling and Analysis of Biological Systems (MABS). He was the 2023 recipient of the Alexander & Mildred Seelig Award for science from the American Nutrition Association.
Dr. Price’s expertise extends beyond academia into the business world. He is also the Chief Scientific Officer of Thorne, a science-driven wellness company that serves approximately 5 million customers and 50,000 health-care practitioners. Previously he was Co-CEO of Onegevity, an AI health intelligence startup company that merged with Thorne, and he was part of the presenting team who took the resulting Thorne HealthTech through its NASDQA IPO in 2021. He was co-founder and served on the Board of Directors of Arivale. He was also a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year for NY in 2021 and selected as one of the 86 “Notables in Healthcare” by Crain’s New York in 2022 and 2023. He has also co-authored a bestselling book, The Age of Scientific Wellness, with Lee Hood, and written for popular outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Scientific American.
Dr. Price has served on the Board of Trustees of the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI), the Pacific Northwest Board of Advisors for the American Cancer Society, and the Oversight Board for the University of Virginia’s Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research. He has served on numerous advisory boards for both academic institutions and industry leaders, including Roche, Providence St. Joseph Health, Sera Prognostics, Navican, Basepaws, Trelys, Rue Four Health, ProPetDx, and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability. He has also contributed his expertise to national committees, including the NAM committee reviewing omics-based tests for clinical trials, and a series of workshops in 2023 on AI and biodata in the US and Southeast Asia, co-sponsored by NASEM and the U.S. State Department.
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John Earls, PhD Senior AI ScientistDr. John Earls is a Senior AI Scientist at the Buck Institute for Aging, working in the Price lab. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Earls specializes in leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze multi-omic, longitudinal human health data with the goal of optimizing wellness and preventing disease. Dr. Earls is dedicated to translating research into practical applications that enhance people's lives. He co-founded Aevum Aging, which was later acquired by Thorne Healthtech, and was an early team member at Arivale, the pioneering company in multi-omic scientific wellness. Outside of his research, Dr. Earls is passionate about weightlifting and enjoys quality time with his family.
JEarls@buckinstitute.org
Selected Publications
- Leroy Hood and Nathan Price, The Age of Scientific Wellness: Why the Future of Medicine is Personalized, Predictive, Data-rich, and In Your Hands, Harvard University Press/Belknap. April 4, 2023
- Price, Nathan and Hood, Leroy, New Alzheimer’s drugs are costly and controversial. Are we going about this all wrong? LA Times, June 11, 2023, online at: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-06-11/alzheimers-drugs-lecanemab-healthcare-prevention-research
- Hood, L., and Price, N., The AI Will See You Now, The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2023, online at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ai-will-see-you-now-5f8fba14
- Wilmanski T, Gibbons SM, Price ND., Healthy aging and the human gut microbiome: why we cannot just turn back the clock, Nature Aging, ;2(10):869-871 (2023) PMID: 37118282
- Watanabe, K., Wilmanski, T., Diener, C., Earls, J.C., Zimmer, A., Lincoln, B., Hadlock, J.J. Lovejoy, J.C., Gibbons, S.M., Magis, A.T., Hood, L., Price, N.D., and Rappaport, N., Multiomic signatures of body mass index identify heterogeneous health phenotypes and responses to a lifestyle intervention, Nature Medicine, online ahead of print (2023) PMID: 36941332
- Wilmanski, T., Diener, C., Rappaport, N., Patwardhan, S., Wiedrick, J., Lapidus, J., Earls, J.C., Zimmer, A., Glusman, G., Robinson, M., Yurkovich, J.T., Kado, D.M., Cauley, J.A., Zmuda, J., Lane, N.E., Magis, A.T., Lovejoy, J.C., Hood, L., Gibbons, S.M., Orwoll, E.S., Price, N.D., Gut microbiome pattern reflects healthy aging and predicts survival in humans, Nature Metabolism, 3(2):274-286 (2021) PMID: 33619379
- Zimmer, A., Korem, Y., Rappaport, N., Wilmanski, T., Baloni, P., Jade, K., Robinson, M., Magis, A.T., Lovejoy, J., Gibbons, S.M., Hood, L., Price, N.D., The geometry of clinical labs and wellness states from deeply phenotyped humans, Nature Communications, 12(1):3578 (2021) PMID: 34117230
- Wainberg, M., Magis, A.T., Earls, J.C., Lovejoy, J.C., Sinnott-Armstrong, N.A., Omenn, G.S., Hood, L., and Price, N.D., Multiomic blood correlates of genetic risk identify presymptomatic disease alterations, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(35):21813-21820 (2020) PMID: 32817414
- Wilmanski, T., Rappaport, N., Earls, J.C., Magis, A.T., Manor, O., Lovejoy, J., Omenn, G.S., Hood, L., Gibbons, S., and Price, N.D., Blood metabolome signature predicts gut microbiome alpha-diversity in health and disease, Nature Biotechnology, 37(10):1217-1228 (2019) PMID: 31477923
- Price, N.D.*, Magis, A.T., Earls, J.C., Glusman, G., Levy, R., Lausted, C., McDonald, D.T., Kusebauch, U., Moss, C.L., Zhou, Y., Qin, S., Moritz, R.L., Brogaard, K., Omenn, G.S., Lovejoy, L.C., and Hood, L.*, A wellness study of 108 individuals using personal, dense, dynamic data clouds, Nature Biotechnology, 35(8):747-756 (2017). *Co-corresponding authors. PMID: 28714965
Dr. Price’s full publication list