Nutrition Research Program

There is an increasing awareness of the impact of diet on human health. Scientific research has found that the consumption of a nutritious diet can reduce the risk of chronic disease, and that bioactive constituents found in foods and medicinal herbs are responsible for these effects. The JLC-BBRI Nutrition Research Program at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis is conducting research to identify and evaluate bioactive natural products from functional foods and herbal medicine for the prevention and treatment of cancer and diabetes and their complications using metabolomic and nutrigenomic approaches. In addition, the zebrafish vertebrate model is used to understand the molecular mechanisms of cardiovascular diseases and to validate therapeutic compounds including drug-like small molecules and natural products. The key areas of research are:

• Use of cancer and diabetes models to study the preventive effects of bioactive food components on cancer and diabetes and its complications
• Use of a metabolomic approach to identify dietary exposure markers for personal nutrition
• Purification, structure elucidation, bioavailability and biotransformation study of novel bioactive natural products from functional foods and medicianal herbs (such as Traditional Chinese Medicine)
• Use of chemical and genetic approaches to dissect the molecular mechanism of blood vessel development to suppress cardiovascular diseases and to combat cancers.

Key Personnel

• Faye Calhoun
• TinChung Leung
• Shengmin Sang