My main interest is aging and chronic diseases in population with the main focus on cancer and dementia. To conduct this research, I have been working on different population-based studies including the Iowa Women's Health Study (IWHS), Atherosclerosis Risk in Community (ARIC) study, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), and Health and Retirement Study (HRS). I have also used IWHS-Medicare study, and planning to use ARIC cancer study linked to Medicare after we complete the linkage.
I am a chronic disease epidemiologist with the primary interest in studying cancer incidence and mortality. My main research focuses on the role of inflammation and immune response, as measured by circulating and tissue biomarkers, genetic alterations and gut microbiome, in relation to cancer and other chronic diseases. I have substantial experience examining the role of biomarkers in large population-based cohorts such as Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC), Iowa Women’s Health Study (IWHS), and the Great Lakes/New England Clinical Epidemiology grant and was a Co-I on large NCI grants (two U01 and R01) for these studies.
My publication and funding records reflect these interests: I have published 100+ peer-reviewed articles in well-recognized journals and have been awarded eleven competitive grants (PI) on these topics since my appointment as faculty. Recently, I have expanded my research into studying biological aging in cancer and other chronic diseases. My recently awarded NCI R01 and NIA R21 projects develop a novel aging construct — a proteomic aging clock based on the SomaScan proteomic data of 5000 proteins in ARIC and validate its performance in Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). In the future, the proteomic aging clock may serve as a predictor of disease outcomes, as a surrogate for aging in clinical trials, and as a potential target for anti-aging medications.