Lab Members

Linhao possesses the background spanning 5 years of pharmacology for his Ph.D. and working at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy more than 15 years in the field of regulation of drug metabolizing enzymes and drug transporters by orphan nuclear receptors in drug metabolism and diseases.

Dr. Zhihui Li has worked on elucidating the regulation and function of solute carrier family 13 member 5 (SLC13A5) in human liver and has published research article indicated that silencing of SLC13A5 disrupts energy homeostasis and inhibits proliferation of human hepatocarcinoma cells. Additional research interests are centered on the biological function of constitutive androstane receptor (CAR) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). His research results suggest that human CAR plays a tumor suppressive role in HCC development which differs from that of rodent CAR and offers insight into the hCAR-HNF4α-EPO axis in human liver tumorigenesis

Kaiyan is working on a project supported by Food and Drug Administration, this program mainly focuses on Drug-induced liver injury, Drug-induced liver injury represents the primary cause of drug attrition during development and post-marketing. In this project, we will investigate potential metabolism-based drug-drug interactions (DDI), and human liver toxicity of drugs used for COVID-19 treatment and other viruses, using the state-of-art 3D human liver spheroid model. The success of the proposed research will provide important human-relevant data that could eventually improve the therapeutic safety and efficacy of drugs for COVID-19 and other viruses infection.

Ritika Kurian is a graduate student who has completed her masters in pharmaceutical sciences from Northeastern University. The emphasis of her research is to explore the utilization of an adjuvant drug to increase metabolic bioactivation of cyclophosphamide by employing advanced techniques such as liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry in addition to cell and animal-based approaches.