Description of Research Expertise

The focus of my research has been the investigation of the mechanism(s) regulating metabolic networks to gain a comprehensive understanding of cellular metabolism in normal and disease states. A special emphasis is on development of a novel pharmacotherapeutic intervention to mitigate metabolic derangements of diverse origin, including defects of the urea cycle and ammonia detoxification, fatty acid oxidation and/or Metabolic Syndromes. In addition, I am collaborating in the investigation of ketogenic diet in cases of neurochemical aberrations to develop treatments for inherited metabolic disease, hypoxia, cerebral palsy, and epilepy. Also, I am participating in studying the beneficial action of branched chain amino acids following neurological dysfunction caused by traumatic brain injury (TBI), and in the investigation of metabolic alteration that occurring in cancer patients prior and/or following treatment. Unique feature of my research is the use of in vivo, organ perfusion, isolated mitochondria or isolated cells as model systems, combined with the use of molecular biology, 15N or 13C as metabolic tracer and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and/or Mass Spectrometry techniques with which to monitor metabolic fluxes and intermediates in order to pinpoint metabolic defect(s), and determining the coupling between metabolic profiling and genes expression in normal and disease states.