Chaoran Ma

Chaoran Ma

Chow-Ran Mah
Assistant Professor of Nutrition

Nutritional epidemiology; cancer epidemiology; genetic and tissue-based biomarkers; multi-omics data; neurodegeneration

Location

Arnold House

715 North Pleasant Street
Amherst, MA 01003
United States

239 Arnold House

My research focuses on understanding age-related chronic complex diseases, especially cancer and neurodegeneration, and how modifiable risk factors, including diet and behavioral factors, affect the disease processes. My work uses nutritional and molecular epidemiological approaches integrating multiomics (e.g., genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) data and artificial intelligence technique. Recently, I expanded my focus to the gut microbiome and its interaction with diet on diseases. My goals are both to understand how the complex interplay of genetic, metabolic, and the gut microbial factors affect the variability of individuals’ responses to dietary intakes, and to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the roles of dietary and behavioral factors in etiology, progression, and survival of age-related chronic diseases. The ability to identify useful biomarkers and individuals at high risk for age-related diseases would provide new opportunities for early intervention, and thus could have a substantial impact on advancing precision health.

Education

  • Postdoctoral, Harvard University
  • PhD, The Pennsylvania State University
  • MMed, Xi’an Jiaotong University
  • BMed, Xi’an Jiaotong University

Key Publications

Ma C, Zhou Y, Fanelli GN, Stopsack KH, Fiorentino M, Zadra G, Mucci LA, Loda M, Tyekucheva S, Penney KL. The Prostate Stromal Transcriptome in Aggressive and Lethal Prostate Cancer. Mol Cancer Res. 2023 Mar 1;21(3):253-260.

Ma C, Wang X, Dai JY, Turman C, Kraft P, Stopsack KH, Loda M, Pettersson A, Mucci LA, Stanford JL, Penney KL. Germline Genetic Variants Associated with Somatic TMPRSS2:ERG Fusion Status in Prostate Cancer: A Genome-Wide Association Study. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2023 Oct 2;32(10):1436-1443.

Ma C, Li Y, Mei Z, Yuan C, Kang JH, Grodstein F, Ascherio A, Willett WC, Chan AT, Huttenhower C, Stampfer MJ, Wang DD. Association Between Bowel Movement Pattern and Cognitive Function: Prospective Cohort Study and a Metagenomic Analysis of the Gut Microbiome. Neurology. 2023 Nov 14;101(20):e2014-e2025.

Ma C, Molsberry S, Li Y, Schwarzschild M, Ascherio A, Gao X. Dietary nicotine intake and risk of Parkinson disease: a prospective study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2020;112 (4),1080-1087.

Ma C, Yin Z, Zhu P, Luo J, Shi X, Gao X. Blood cholesterol in late-life and cognitive decline: a longitudinal study of the Chinese elderly. Molecular Neurodegeneration 2017;12(1):24.