Postdoctoral Fellow
Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
My work over past 7-8 years has investigated the production of functional foods or otherwise nutraceuticals (carotenoids and functional lipids) from the non-trivial sources like filamentous fungi Mucor circinelloids, and usage of metabolomics/lipidomics approaches in food science, biotechnology, nutrition, and precision nutrition projects. I am best known for my knowledge across the multidisciplinary food science/nutrition subjects to Nutri-metabolomics/lipidomics areas with a strong grip on statistics and data science as well. So far I have published around 20 peer reviewed articles and 4 chapters on these topics with an impact factor of >70 and h-index 12. This work has had an international impact beyond my initial estimation. So far, I have had the opportunity to work on latest metabolomics/lipidomics instruments like Q-Exactive (QE) (Orbitrap) LC-ESI-MS/MS, Orbitrap Exploris-480 coupled LC-ESI-MS/MS, cyclic ion mobility-mass spectrometer (cIMS), LC-QTOF-MS, LC-QQQ-MS etc. I have experienced of data processing and analyzing using many vendor and non-vendors based softwares. So fat my projects have been funded generously from European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, National Natural Science Foundation of China, TaiShan Industrial Experts Program, and Higher Education Commission of Pakistan.
Area of Excellence: Investigation
Focus 1: Metabolomics/Lipidomics guided predictive, preventive, and precision nutrition. Nutritional metabolomics/lipidomics is an emerging field in nutrition research, and it is expected to play a significant role in deciphering the interaction between diet and health. I work on using the multiplatform metabolomics approaches to evaluate the effect of different plant-based diets and nutraceuticals on the metabolome and lipidome of human beings. I, specifically, check and validate the health effects of plant-based diets and functional foods in healthy, overweight/obese, cardiac, and cancer patients. In addition, my work also involves comprehensively characterizing the thousands of phytochemicals in foods, to identify food byproducts in human biofluids or tissues, to characterize nutrient deficiencies or excesses, to monitor biochemical responses to dietary interventions, to track long-term or short-term dietary habits, and to guide the development of targeted nutritional therapies. Recently, I checked and validated the health effects of cinnamon and capsicum in overweight/obese persons fed on high-carbohydrate diets. This study confirmed the healthpromoting effects of cinnamon and capsicum and manifested that intake of cinnamon and capsicum along high-carbohydrate diet can mitigate the deleterious effects of high-calories meals in vulnerable group of people, which are prone to metabolic syndrome and diabetes. I was able to find biomarkers of high calorie meals intake and associated deleterious metabolic changes in overweight/obese participants. Furthermore, this study used the multiplatform metabolomics approach, which can be used to find food intake biomarkers, medicine intake biomarkers, early-biomarkers of any diseases, which is essential for finding therapeutic strategies and tailoring the precision medication and precision nutrition. This study has strong and long lasting impact on health care sector, precision nutrition and disease alleviation projects, medical sciences, human nutrition, foods science, food/nutraceutical sector, pharma sector, and well-being of society.
Focus 2: Methods development to do metabolomics/lipidomics. Since biological samples are complex ones with thousands of small molecules in it and a single sensitive method is not enough in identifying all small molecules in it. Therefore, there is always need in metabolomics to develop such a sensitive method which can detect either specific class or all present compounds (depending on scientific question) in given a biological sample. Therefore, I am also continuously working on developing new unbiased robust analytical methods in order to increase the coverage of potential identifying small biological molecules and to improve the sensitivity, specificity, and selectivity of instruments to identify metabolites in potentially required targeted ranges. I am also continuously working on designing new workflows and pipelines to produce high throughput, reproducible, repeatable, reliable metabolomics data. Recently, we presented data about our method to showing the separation of isobaric C18:1 fatty acids using cyclic ion mobility mass spectrometry.
Finally yet importantly, I am using state of art metabolomics approaches for metabolomics and multi-omics guided precision nutrition and precision medicine initiatives, which aims to shift from “one-size-fits-all” nutrition/treatment to tailored/personalized nutrition/treatment for people. Since governments have been allocating and had spent almost USD 792 billion worldwide for the treatments of modern civilization diseases (out which almost 377 and 166 billion dollars were allocated and spent only by the US and European Union), precision nutrition/medicine-based approaches have recently been proposed as cost-effective alternative to pharmacotherapeutic approaches. With the success of these approaches, governments would be able to save billions of dollars in budget with multiplied growth in pharma and food industry and related job market.