Description of Research Expertise

Research Program
Diet, the Gut Microbiome, and Host Metabolism

Program Summary
Dr. Wu is the Ferdinand G. Weisbrod Professor in Gastroenterology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where he is the Co-Director of the Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Disease. He was the inaugural Director and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the American Gastroenterological Association Center for Gut Microbiome Research and Education and is an elected member of both the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He is the Co-Director of the PennCHOP Microbiome Program, a campus-wide initiative to accelerate research in the microbiome across the entire university campus. The current research programs in the Wu laboratory focus on the mutualistic interactions between the gut microbiota and the host with a particular focus on metabolism. Growing evidence suggests that diet impacts upon both the structure and function of the gut microbiota that, in turn, influences the host in fundamental ways. Current areas of investigation include the effect of diet on the composition of the gut microbiota and its subsequence effect on host metabolism related to nitrogen balance as well as its impact on metabolic pathways in the intestinal epithelium, principally fatty acid oxidation. In 2018, Dr. Wu was appointed as the Director of the Penn Center for Nutritional Sciences and Medicine (PenNSAM), a joint collaboration between the Penn School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. PenNSAM focuses on integrating human clinical metadata, traditional dietary assessments, and nutritional biomarkers with the latest high throughput molecular profiling technologies together with advanced biostatistical and computational tools in a transformational approach to improve human health and ameliorate disease through diet and nutrition.

Lab personnel:
Aaron Hecht, MD, PhD
Lillian Chau, MS
Elliot Friedman, PhD
Dylan Curry, PhD
Johanna Lemons, PhD
Bryce Perler, MD
Lindsey Herman, BS