Stack Lab Awarded Early Career Funding from RI-INBRE
Dr. Tyler Stack, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, was recently awarded an Early Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health Rhode Island IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (RI-INBRE) program for his project entitled “Identifying and quantifying drug metabolism by the human gut microbiome.” The goal of the RI-INBRE program is to support the research career development of promising new or early-career tenure-track faculty. Investigators are expected to demonstrate a commitment to research excellence and strong potential to establish an independently funded biomedical research program in one or more of the RI-INBRE thematic areas: cancer, neuroscience, or environmental health sciences. With this award, totaling $200,000 in direct funds over two years, Dr. Stack will be able to purchase supplies and equipment for the research laboratory and support the summer stipends of three PC undergraduate students each summer.
This specific award centers around how enzymes function. As a graduate student, Dr. Stack became interested in the gut microbiome and its impact on human health. Among many known roles, these microbes can aid digestion, prevent infections of virulent bacteria, and impact mood by altering hormones. One growing area of research is identifying how gut bacteria can modify drugs, which affects the efficacy and safety of therapeutics.
“The trillions of microbes that inhabit our guts help metabolize the food we eat, and this metabolism can be specific or promiscuous to respond to our changing diets,” he says. Most of the enzymes in these bacteria are of unknown function, and his current research interests focus on the metabolic “mischief” they can incur on us as their hosts. This research project will focus on this “accidental” metabolism by bacteria in the human gut – in essence, how they change the structure of the drugs we ingest. In the lab, Dr. Stack and his students will quantify the efficiency and promiscuity of enzymes in a specific protein family to determine the full potential of these enzymes to modify drugs. This is important because drug metabolism affects the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of therapeutics. It is possible that one day physicians could take into account an individual’s microbiome when considering the best therapy to treat human diseases and cancers. Congratulations, again, to Dr. Stack and his team!
