Biologic Mechanisms of Disease and Risk Factors

Research and Specialization

• Investigate the fundamental molecular causes and mechanistic underpinning of human disease.

• We target a wide variety of diseases, including cancer at multiple organ sites, cardiovascular-, respiratory-, immune-related (inflammatory), and metabolic diseases.

• Special emphasis is placed on chronic diseases with modifiable risk factors, including lifestyle, diet, and occupational/medicinal/environmental exposure to toxicants and carcinogens.

• A major area of interest is to uncover the underlying causes of ethnic/racial and gender disparities in the burden and clinical outcomes of human diseases.

• A combination of classic molecular biology techniques and cutting-edge ‘omics’ technologies is used to detect alterations in the genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome, and/or metabolome in cells and tissues of volunteers from the general population, disease cohorts, or clinical trials, and specimens from the experimental animals (in vivo) or cell cultures (in vitro).

• A systems biology approach is further employed to integrate the results in order to elucidate how the interplay of genetic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and/or metabolomic changes contributes to the development of human diseases.