Philippe Horvath is a French scientist who works for DuPont Nutrition and Health. His research was important in creating CRISPR-Cas, a useful method for changing genes in a specific way. For this work, he received the 2015 Massry Prize along with Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. He also won the 2016 Canada Gairdner International Award with the same co-recipients, as well as Feng Zhang, Rodolphe Barrangou, Anthony Fauci, and Frank Plummer.
Career
Born in Colmar, his family name, Horvath, shows he has Hungarian heritage. He attended school in Colmar and later studied cell and molecular biology at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg. He earned a Master’s degree in 1996 and a Ph.D. in 2000. After completing his studies, he joined the Department of Research and Development at Rhodia Food (previously known as Rhône-Poulenc) in Dangé-Saint-Romain. There, he helped create methods using molecular biology to identify and classify bacteria and their phages, including lactic acid bacteria. In 2004, Rhodia Food was bought by Danisco, and Philippe became a senior scientist in 2006. Later, the division was purchased by DuPont in 2011. In 2014, Horvath became an Associate member of the DuPort Fellows Forum, and in 2015, he was named a DuPont Nutrition & Health Technical Fellow.
Research
Since late 2002, Philippe's research has focused on CRISPR, a special pattern found in bacterial DNA. Early studies aimed to improve the ability of bacteria used in making cheese and ice cream to survive longer, especially to fight bacteriophages, which are viruses that attack bacteria. Horvath studied parts of bacterial DNA with CRISPR patterns, both to help identify different types of bacteria and to understand how CRISPR helps bacteria defend against viruses. As scientists learned more about this defense system, they discovered that CRISPR could be used with special enzymes to edit genes and control how cells function. By 2016, Philippe had helped create 95 patents and/or patent applications and had written 31 research articles that were reviewed by other scientists.