Our long-term research goals are to 1) investigate the molecular mechanisms of chronic inflammation in obesity-related metabolic diseases and 2) identify new dietary interventions or molecular therapeutics to suppress such chronic inflammation. Obesity is a major risk factor for many chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, and type 2 diabetes. The progression and complications of these chronic diseases are often driven by chronic inflammation, which is one major focus of our research. We are particularly interested in the contribution of the NLRP3 inflammasome and extracellular vesicles to chronic inflammation. We also actively work on dietary vesicle-like nanoparticles and their anti-inflammatory functions in the context of obesity-related diseases. We use both in vitro cell culture and in vivo mouse models, and employ many state-of-the-art molecular and biochemical techniques and omics approaches for our research.
Publications
Selected Papers
Liu B, Nguyen PL, Yu H, Li X, Wang H, Price J, Niu M, Guda C, Moreau R, Ramer-Tait A, Naldrett M, Alvarez S, Yu J. Critical contributions of protein cargos to the functions of macrophage-derived extracellular vesicles. J Nanobiotechnology 2023; 21(1):352. doi: 10.1186/s12951-023-02105-9
Chen X, Liu B, Li X, An T, Zhou Y, Li G, Wu-Smart J, Alvarez S, Naldrett M, Eudy J, Kubik G, Wilson R, Kachman S, Cui J, Yu J. Identification of anti-inflammatory vesicle-like nanoparticles in honey. J Extracell Vesicles 2021; 10(4): e12069. doi: 10.1002/jev2.12069
Liu B, Li X, Yu H, Shi X, Zhou Y, Alvarez S, Naldrett MJ, Kachman SD, Ro SH, Sun X, Chung S, Jing L, Yu J. Therapeutic potential of garlic chive-derived vesicle-like nanoparticles in NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated inflammatory diseases. Theranostics 2021; 11(19): 9311-9330. doi:10.7150/thno.60265.