Zhenhua Liu

Zhenhua Liu

Professor of Nutrition
Graduate Program Director, Nutrition

Micronutrients, traditional medicine, nutritional epigenetics, obesity and inflammation, gut microbiome, gastrointestinal health, cancer prevention

Location

Goessmann Building

686 North Pleasant Street
Amherst, MA 01003
United States

281D Goessmann

Diet and lifestyle are modifiable factors that play a critical role in public health. My laboratory dedicates to investigating how those factors, along with their metabolically-related gene variants, interact to influence the development of chronic diseases. My research areas have been, for a long period, concentrating on a) Nutrition, Epigenetics and Cancer Prevention, and b) Obesity, Inflammation and Gastrointestinal Health. Specifically, my laboratory focuses on the nutritional regulation of the Wnt pathway as it tightly relates to the development of many types of cancer including colorectal and breast cancer. We employ cell culture, animal models and human biospecimens, biochemical and molecular techniques, as well as nutritional informatics and functional genomic approaches to understand the etiology of cancer. The ultimate goal of my research is to translate our biological findings into practical dietary strategies that can effectively diminish the burden of Non-communicable diseases, especially cancer, in our society.

Education

  • Postdoctoral, Tufts-New England Medical Center and Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University
  • PhD, Auburn University
  • MS, Auburn University
  • MS, China Agricultural University, Beijing
  • BS, Hunan Agricultural University, Hunan, China

Key Publications

Li J, Tang Y, Lin TC, Zeng H, Mason JB, Liu Z. 2023. Tumor necrosis factor-α knockout mitigates intestinal inflammation and tumorigenesis in obese Apc1638N mice. Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. 117:109355. PMID: 37085057.

Frederick ALM, Guo C, Meyer A, Yan L, Schneider SS, Liu Z. 2021. The influence of obesity on folate status, DNA methylation and cancer-related gene expression in normal breast tissues from premenopausal women. Epigenetics.16(4):458-467. PMID: 32749195.

Wang W, Yang J, Zhang J, Wang Y, Hwang SH, Qi W, Wan D, Kim D, Sun J, Sanidad KZ, Yang H, Park Y, Liu JY, Zhao X, Zheng X, Liu Z, Hammock BD, Zhang G. 2018. Lipidomic profiling reveals soluble epoxide hydrolase as a therapeutic target of obesity-induced colonic inflammation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 115:5283-5288. PMID: 29717038. 

Bird JK, Ronnenberg, AG, Choi, SW, Du, F, Mason, JB, Liu Z. 2015. Obesity is associated with an increased red blood cell folate despite lower dietary intakes and serum concentrations. Journal of Nutrition. 145:79-86. PMID: 25527662.

Flood, A., Mason, J. B., Liu, Z., Cash, B. D., Schatzkin, A., Schoenfeld, P. S., Cross, A. J. 2011. Concentration of folate in colorectal tissue biopsies predicts prevalence of adenomatous polyps. Gut, 60:66-72. PMID: 21068136.