My long-term research goals are to continue to conduct high-quality, peer-reviewed, grant-funded original research in the areas of cancer metabolism and biomarker discovery in collaboration with clinicians, bioinformaticians and epidemiologists. My research interest involves defining the molecular mechanisms that link metabolic disruptions in gut microbial-host co-metabolism to gastrointestinal diseases and metabolic disorders such as diabetes.My current research program combines a series of metabolomics, microbiome, bioinformatics, and molecular biology approaches to the identification of cancer etiology in a variety of tumor types and the mechanistic studies of key metabolic pathways that are critically involved during carcinogenesis. Throughout my career I have worked closely with basic and translational researchers, and clinical colleagues and served as mentor to many PhD/MD candidates.
My laboratory focused on the development and clinical application of metabolomics methods starting in 2003, when the field of metabolomics was just emerging. Our lab currently operates a state-of-art metabolomics program that quantitatively profiles endogenous small-molecule metabolites and trace elements from biological specimens including blood, urine, saliva, cell lysates, and tissues of experimental animals and human subjects.

The program involves:

• Targeted analysis of metabolic flux and pathways using isotope labeled metabolites and high sensitivity, high throughput LC-MS-MS and GC-MS platforms,
• Unbiased metabolic profiling and data mining, metabolite annotation and biological interpretation,
• A fully automated, high-throughput platform that quantitatively profiles microbial metabolome coupled with bioinformatics capable of integrating into metagenomic data to provide the functional translation of the microbiome.
• Classification and prediction of disease phenotypes based on their unique metabolic signatures for patient stratification and personalized treatment.