Faculty

Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Nutrition
Associate Member, Broad Institute Harvard/MIT, Harvard Stem Cell Institute
The Hotamışlıgil Lab explores interactions between immune and metabolic responses and their contribution to metabolic disease clusters. Current research aims are 1) organelle homeostasis — organelle architecture and function, novel nutrient sensing and adaptive responses in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and 2) lipid metabolism —the mechanism of action of new lipid hormones and lipid-binding protein hormone complexes.

The Hui Lab takes the approaches of metabolomics and in vivo isotope tracing to understand the regulation of body weight using both cachexia and obesity animal models.

The Kory Lab is studying mechanisms and functions of metabolic compartmentalization with a focus on nutrient transport. They research the basics of how mitochondria bring in and export all the metabolites that they generate for the cell, and the roles of these processes in health and disease, such as inborn errors of metabolism, neurological diseases, cancer and diabetes.

The Mair Lab studies metabolic flexibility, and how its decline accelerates the aging process and leads to age-related non-communicable diseases. The lab’s central hypothesis is that many of the chronic conditions seen in old age—Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes—are caused by metabolic dysfunction. The lab team studies how cells sense fuel and decide what to with it, and how nutrient sensors and metabolic organelles become less accurate with time.

The Ubellacker Lab leverages metabolic vulnerabilities in metastasizing cells to work toward inhibiting cancer progression, with a specific focus on exploiting the metabolic dependencies of cancer cells in lymph nodes. They employ human and animal models of melanoma and breast cancers in parallel with clinical studies and collaborative epidemiological studies (with the Nurses’ Health group at HSPH) to identify and target metabolic programs required for metastasis, thus elucidating new therapeutic targets.

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease affects more than 25% of the population globally. Yet, our understanding of the pathogenesis of this disorder remains rudimentary, and we lack effective therapies. The Biddinger Lab uses single cell transcriptomics, metabolomics, and physiological studies to define the molecular events that drive this disease.

Associate Professor of Molecular Metabolism, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Danial Lab investigates how cellular fuel usage and fuel flexibility modulate stress responses at the molecular level through alterations in cellular bioenergetics, reductive power and biosynthetic pathways. This research program has led to advances in understanding anabolic and catabolic mechanisms that link altered fuel metabolism and nutrient signaling to diseases such as cancer, diabetes and seizure disorders.

The Schaffer Lab studies fundamental mechanisms of metabolic stress responses and the pathophysiology of diabetes complications. Using a range of approaches from genetic screens in model systems to investigations in human subjects, the long-term goal of the Schaffer lab is to develop treatments and preventative strategies to improve the lives of patients with diabetes.

The Gao Lab focuses on environmental health and exposomics. They investigate how chemical, biological, and physical agents in our environment impact human health by developing and applying advanced analytical methods to measure environmental exposures. Their work combines exposome research with multi-omics (e.g., metabolomics and proteomics) approaches to understand the links between environmental factors and disease development, with particular emphasis on creating new tools for comprehensive exposure assessment and investigating chronic and complex diseases’ etiology.

The Garrett Lab studies the interplay between the gastrointestinal immune system and the gut microbiome. We explore how the gut microbiota influence both innate (myeloid cell) and adaptive (T cell) immunity, and how these processes contribute to immune homeostasis and disease.

The Lu Lab is focused on the mechanistic understanding of how the environment contributes to human health and disease. We combine the power of functional genetics and genomics, mechanistic studies, and human epidemiology to tackle important public health problems.