Raghav Sehgal biomarker's of aging research
Although we haven’t found the fountain of youth, Dr. Raghav Sehgal may have discovered something even more powerful: a way to measure exactly how each part of your body is aging—and potentially slow it down. Which anti-aging treatments actually impact aging according to Raghav Sehgal’s biomarker research? Are any worth trying to extend your healthspan and lifespan?
Recently named to Forbes’ prestigious 30 Under 30 list for 2025, the Yale-trained computational biologist has developed groundbreaking tools that are fundamentally changing how we understand and measure human aging. His work bridges artificial intelligence, genetics, and medicine to answer questions that have puzzled scientists for generations.
We all know our chronological age—the number of birthdays we’ve celebrated. But chronological age tells an incomplete story. Two 50-year-olds can have vastly different health profiles. One might run marathons while the other struggles with chronic disease. The difference lies in their biological age—how old their bodies actually are at the cellular level.
Traditional aging biomarkers attempted to capture this biological age with a single number. But Sehgal recognized a fundamental flaw in this approach: our organs don’t all age at the same rate.
“Due to lifestyle and dietary choices, researchers explain that organ systems age differently in a single body,” Sehgal explains. Your heart might be aging faster than your brain, or your liver might be younger than your kidneys. A single biological age number masks this critical heterogeneity.
Sehgal’s answer to this problem is SYMPHONYAge (System Methylation Proxy of Heterogeneous Organ Years)—originally developed as “Systems Age” during his doctoral research at Yale. This breakthrough emerged from an extraordinary collaborative effort within Yale’s aging biology community.
Working under Albert Higgins-Chen, MD, PhD, was transformative—his mentorship style encouraged both independence and deep scientific rigor, Sehgal recalls. The research team benefited from a constellation of Yale expertise: Graeme Mason, PhD, and Steve Kleinstein, PhD, who helped refine the computational modeling approach; Rajita Sinha, PhD, from the Department of Psychiatry, who provided crucial guidance in bridging biological aging with stress and behavioral health research; and Morgan Levine, PhD, whose pioneering work on aging clocks laid the foundation for the entire field.
The collaborative effort extended beyond Yale’s faculty. The Systems Age research team included computational biologists Yaroslav Markov and Chenxi Qin, along with researchers Margarita Meer and Courtney Hadley, each bringing specialized expertise to different aspects of the project. This multidisciplinary approach—spanning psychiatry, genomics, computational biology, and translational medicine—was essential to creating a biomarker system complex enough to capture aging’s heterogeneity.
This revolutionary biomarker system uses epigenetics—chemical modifications to DNA that change how genes are expressed without altering the DNA sequence itself—to measure aging across 11 distinct physiological systems:
The remarkable innovation? All of this information comes from a single blood draw.
“This allows systems age to not only give more insight into organ aging but also makes it a more precise biomarker than whole body aging epigenetic biomarker counterparts,” Sehgal notes.
SYMPHONYAge isn’t just a research tool—it’s already being used in clinical settings. The technology has been patented and licensed exclusively to TruDiagnostic, making it available to physicians and patients.
“SYMPHONYAge functions as a critical tool for physicians, serving as a biomarker that pinpoints which systems are aging the fastest in an individual, providing actionable insights for organ-specific care,” Sehgal explained in his recent Forbes interview.
The clinical applications are profound. By identifying which organs are aging fastest, doctors can target interventions more precisely. If your cardiovascular system shows accelerated aging, you and your physician might focus on heart-healthy lifestyle changes or medications. If your metabolic age is elevated, addressing blood sugar regulation and metabolic health becomes the priority.
The technology even gained mainstream attention when it was featured in the Netflix documentary “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Study,” demonstrating how dietary interventions can reverse specific organ aging.
Beyond measuring aging, Sehgal wanted to know which interventions actually slow it down. This led him to create TranslAGE-Response—a harmonized database analyzing 51 different longevity interventional studies involving over 100,000 samples.
This massive undertaking was a team effort. Working alongside Daniel Borrus, Jessica Kasamoto, Jenel F. Armstrong, John Gonzalez, Yaroslav Markov, and Ahana Priyanka, the team standardized diverse datasets and calculated 16 prominent epigenetic clocks plus 95 other DNA methylation biomarkers across all studies. This collaborative approach allowed them to compare interventions systematically for the first time.
This massive analysis revealed critical insights about what works and what doesn’t:
Pharmacological interventions showed the strongest effects. Anti-TNF therapies (used to treat autoimmune conditions) and metformin (a diabetes medication) demonstrated robust impacts on biological aging. The anti-inflammatory effects of these medications appear to slow aging at the molecular level.
Lifestyle interventions matter, but differently. Diet, exercise, and other lifestyle changes showed measurable effects, though generally smaller than pharmaceutical interventions. However, lifestyle changes often improved specific organ systems dramatically—the vegan diet in the Netflix study, for instance, showed significant reductions in epigenetic age.
Not all aging clocks are created equal. Newer generation clocks trained to predict mortality or rate of aging captured intervention effects more reliably than older clocks trained simply on chronological age. This finding helps researchers design better clinical trials and avoid false positive results.
Some interventions showed inconsistent results. Senolytic drugs (which clear senescent or “zombie” cells) had variable effects across studies, suggesting we need more research to understand when and how they work best.
This collaborative research approach taught Sehgal one of his most important lessons: “Translation is the true measure of scientific impact.” It’s not enough to publish papers—the work must reach patients and physicians to make a real difference.
Sehgal’s journey at Yale wasn’t without challenges. A pivotal moment came when his original mentor, Morgan Levine, PhD, transitioned out of academia. “Morgan was instrumental in shaping my early direction and intellectual foundation, and I’ll always be grateful for her guidance,” Sehgal reflects. “Her departure required me to reorient within my research program and find new mentorship to continue pushing forward.”
He found that new guidance in Albert Higgins-Chen, PhD, whose mentorship helped him grow as a scientist during this critical transition. The support from the CBB leadership and the broader Yale aging biology community made a significant difference. “What helped me most was having a strong network—mentors, peers, and collaborators—who created a sense of continuity and community,” Sehgal notes. “And learning to ask for help, early and often, became one of the most valuable lessons of my PhD.”
Never one to rest on his laurels, Sehgal recently developed CpGPT—a foundation model for DNA methylation analysis that leverages transformer architecture similar to ChatGPT.
This AI tool can analyze methylation patterns across the entire genome and has already demonstrated impressive capabilities:
CpGPT represents the next frontier in personalized medicine, offering deeper mechanistic insights that could lead to more effective anti-aging therapeutics.
Sehgal’s research portfolio extends beyond aging biomarkers. As Scientific Principal at LongevityTech.fund and Director of Bioinformatics at Healthy Longevity Clinic, he’s actively working to translate research discoveries into real-world applications.
His vision is clear: “Together, these efforts are paving the way for a transformative era of medicine—one that precisely quantifies aging, empowers physicians and patients with validated longevity interventions, and enables longer, healthier lives.”
The implications are staggering. Imagine a future where:
This future isn’t science fiction—it’s already emerging from laboratories like Sehgal’s.
While SYMPHONYAge and similar advanced biomarker testing isn’t yet universally available, the research provides valuable insights for anyone interested in healthy aging:
Focus on what matters most for your body. Generic anti-aging advice may not address your specific needs. If testing becomes available, understanding your personal “age-otype” can guide more targeted interventions.
Pharmacological interventions show promise. Common medications like metformin may have anti-aging benefits beyond their primary uses, though these should only be taken under medical supervision.
Lifestyle changes work, but require consistency. The interventional studies showed that sustained lifestyle modifications—particularly around diet, exercise, and stress management—produce measurable biological age reductions.
Inflammation is a key driver. Anti-inflammatory interventions, whether pharmaceutical or lifestyle-based, consistently showed benefits across multiple aging biomarkers.
Dr. Raghav Sehgal’s biomarker research represents a paradigm shift in how we think about aging. Rather than accepting aging as an inevitable, uniform process, his research reveals it as a complex, measurable, and potentially modifiable phenomenon that varies dramatically across different body systems.
As Sehgal continues to refine these tools and expand our understanding of what drives biological aging, we move closer to a world where healthspan—the period of life spent in good health—can match our ever-extending lifespan.
The fountain of youth remains a myth, but thanks to scientists like Sehgal and his collaborative teams at Yale, we’re developing something better: a precise, personalized roadmap to aging well.
Dr. Raghav Sehgal completed his PhD at Yale University and currently serves as Scientific Principal at LongevityTech.fund and Director of Bioinformatics at Healthy Longevity Clinic. His research has been published in leading scientific journals and featured in media including Forbes, Netflix, and The Juggernaut.
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