Research Overview

Twenty-four million Americans suffer from diabetes and the number is increasing at a rate of 5% per year with a cost of $174 billion annually. Diabetes is the leading cause non-traumatic lower limb amputation, blindness, end stage renal disease, heart attack and stroke. The root cause behind these complications is that high levels of glucose found in diabetes are metabolized or processed in a damaging way. This excess glucose metabolism leads to formation of damaging agents in the cell, called reactive oxygen species, which disrupt a large number of metabolic pathways and other cellular processes.

As diabetic complications are tied primarily to dysfunctional metabolism, our work is focused on analyzing these metabolic changes using metabolomic technologies. Cellular metabolomics is defined as the global analysis of biological small molecules. Analysis of the metabolic changes can not only indicate where cellular breakdown occurs, but can also be used to determine the therapeutic efficacy of drugs before they require further extensive and expensive testing. To achieve the most complete picture of cellular metabolism, exquisitely sensitive and accurate analytical systems are developed.