Biography

As a faculty member in a medical school, I spend my time on scientific research and teaching and training. Throughout my research career starting from being a graduate student to now as an independent assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, I have worked in several fields including medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology, enzymology, metabolism and nephrology, which makes me a multi-disciplinary biomedical scientist. In the past more than ten years, I have been studying the role of prostaglandin transporter (PGT) under physiological and pathological conditions. I have invented and further developed potent inhibitors of PGT, which have been licensed to a biotech company to develop those inhibitors into pharmacological therapeutics. My recent research work focuses on studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms of metabolic disorders including obesity and diabetes, diabetic complications, such as impaired wound healing, and developing pharmacological and nutraceutical therapeutics. We have discovered that a natural compound, mangiferin, is a novel activator of pyruvate dehydrogenase, which is the central gate-keeper of carbohydrate oxidative metabolism in mitochondria. Mangiferin can stimulate carbohydrate oxidation and prevent diet induced obesity, insulin resistance and liver steatosis. Over the years I have enjoyed training post-doctoral fellows, graduate students and renal fellows in basic research and shown them that boundaries between fields can be crossed.