Dr. Albert Higgins-Chen

Albert Higgins-Chen, M.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University where he is a principal investigator.

The Higgins-Chen lab develops and applies novel aging biomarkers to test the modifiability of aging to prevent or delay diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. The primarily computational lab utilizes machine learning techniques to estimate the biological age of individuals from high-dimensional omics data. These aging biomarkers are then tested in human clinical trials and mouse intervention studies testing geroscience-based treatments to determine if longitudinal changes predict reductions in long-term morbidity and mortality risk.

Albert recently reported that epigenetic clocks, commonly used aging biomarkers based on DNA methylation, suffer from technical noise that makes their test-retest reliability inadequate for longitudinal and intervention studies, and developed a new machine learning approach to solve this problem. Read A computational solution for bolstering reliability of epigenetic clocks: Implications for clinical trials and longitudinal tracking.

Read More than bad luck: Cancer and aging are linked to replication-driven changes to the epigenome, The Cutting Edge of Epigenetic Clocks: In Search of Mechanisms Linking Aging and Mental Health, and Biomarkers of aging for the identification and evaluation of longevity interventions.

Albert works at the Morgan Levine’s Laboratory for Aging in Living Systems (ALIS) on applying computational and experimental approaches to discover the molecular mechanisms driving biological aging. Read Clock Work: Deconstructing the Epigenetic Clock Signals in Aging, Disease, and Reprogramming and Improved reliability of epigenetic clocks.

He is a clinically trained psychiatrist and has applied aging biomarkers to investigate how mental health and treatment affect aging. He now develops new methods for measuring the biological aging process and the effects of aging interventions. Read Biologists have learned to predict death with an accuracy of one year, Bolstering the reliability of epigenetic clocks, and Systems Age: A single blood methylation test to quantify aging heterogeneity across 11 physiological systems.

During his clinical psychiatry residency training at Yale University, he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Morgan Levine as a postdoctoral fellow. During that time, he studied how aging biomarkers may be altered by mental health and treatment. He also developed a method to train aging biomarkers with high test-retest reliability. His laboratory is developing new methods for constructing aging biomarkers that 1) are useful specifically for longitudinal and intervention studies and 2) complement clinical knowledge and data. Read Longitudinal study of DNA methylation and epigenetic clocks prior to and following test-confirmed COVID-19 and mRNA vaccination.

Albert was the first-place co-recipient of the 2020 Seymour Lustman Resident Research Award in Psychiatry and was selected to receive the 2019 National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Outstanding Resident Award. He was also selected as Member of the 2023 Roadmap Workgroup for Biomarkers of Aging Consortium.

During his M.D./Ph.D. training at the University of Michigan, he worked with C. elegans identifying genes regulating aging and longevity. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree of Arts in Biochemical Sciences in 2009 from Harvard University.

Albert earned his M.D. and his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan.

Watch Measuring Biologic Age: Methylomic Changes.

Read Transcriptional dynamics of endodermal organ formation, A systematic review of biological, social and environmental factors associated with epigenetic clock acceleration, and Longevity Genes Revealed by Integrative Analysis of Isoform-Specific daf-16/FoxO Mutants of Caenorhabditis elegans.

Read Effects of Caenorhabditis elegans sgk‐1 mutations on lifespan, stress resistance, and DAF‐16/FoxO regulation and Schizophrenia and epigenetic aging biomarkers: increased mortality, reduced cancer risk, and unique clozapine effects.

Visit his Academic page, LinkedIn profile, Google Scholar page, GitHub page, and ResearchGate page. Follow him on Facebook, ORCiD, and Loop.