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Jun Li, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Associate Epidemiologist, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Assistant Professor, Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
juli@bwh.harvard.edu

As an epidemiologist with medical training, I am experienced and committed to the research of diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention, with particular interests and expertise in integrating state-of-the-art multi-omics technologies and advanced analytics under the framework of systems epidemiology, aiming to identify novel risk factors, understand disease etiology and mechanisms through which risk factors impact health, and to inform the development of personalized preventive and therapeutic strategies. In the past few years, I have been leading multiple projects in large population cohorts and interventional trials including the UK Biobank, Nurses’ Health Studies, Health Professionals Follow-up Study, the PREDIMED study, and the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, among others. I was awarded the Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award and the Scott Grundy Award for Excellence in Metabolism Research by the American Heart Association. I am actively involved in teaching activities at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. My current research projects include:

  1. integrating multi-omics data (transcriptomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics) to examine mechanisms through which diet and lifestyles affect risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cognitive decline;
  2. employing large-scale genetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic data to examine inflammatory pathways relevant to the development cardiovascular disease and diabetes;
  3. using polygenic risk prediction for complex disease to identify high-risk populations and examine effective diet/lifestyle intervention strategies for disease prevention among high genetic risk groups.

MD: Huazhong University of Science and technology
PhD: Huazhong University of Science and technology

  1. Li J, Guasch-Ferré M, Chung W, Ruiz-Canela M, Toledo E, Corella D, Bhupathiraju SN, Tobias DK, Tabung FK, Hu J, Zhao T, Turman C, Feng YA, Clish CB, Mucci L, Eliassen AH, Costenbader KH, Karlson EW, Wolpin BM, Ascherio A, Rimm EB, Manson JE, Qi L, Martínez-González MÁ, Salas-Salvadó J, Hu FB, Liang L. The Mediterranean diet, plasma metabolome, and cardiovascular disease risk. Eur Heart J. 2020 Jul 21;41(28):2645-2656. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa209. PubMed PMID: 32406924; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7377580.
  2. Li J, Lee DH, Hu J, Tabung FK, Li Y, Bhupathiraju SN, Rimm EB, Rexrode KM, Manson JE, Willett WC, Giovannucci EL, Hu FB. Dietary Inflammatory Potential and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Among Men and Women in the U.S. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2020 Nov 10;76(19):2181-2193. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2020.09.535. PubMed PMID: 33153576; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7745775.
  3. Li J, Li Y, Ivey KL, Wang DD, Wilkinson JE, Franke A, Lee KH, Chan A, Huttenhower C, Hu FB, Rimm EB, Sun Q. Interplay between diet and gut microbiome, and circulating concentrations of trimethylamine N-oxide: findings from a longitudinal cohort of US men. Gut. 2022 Apr;71(4):724-733. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2020-322473. Epub 2021 Apr 29. PubMed PMID: 33926968; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8553812.
  4. Qi Q*, Li J*, Yu B* (Contributed equally), Moon JY, Chai JC, Merino J, Hu J, Ruiz-Canela M, Rebholz C, Wang Z, Usyk M, Chen GC, Porneala BC, Wang W, Nguyen NQ, Feofanova EV, Grove ML, Wang TJ, Gerszten RE, Dupuis J, Salas-Salvadó J, Bao W, Perkins DL, Daviglus ML, Thyagarajan B, Cai J, Wang T, Manson JE, Martínez-González MA, Selvin E, Rexrode KM, Clish CB, Hu FB, Meigs JB, Knight R, Burk RD, Boerwinkle E, Kaplan RC. Host and gut microbial tryptophan metabolism and type 2 diabetes: an integrative analysis of host genetics, diet, gut microbiome and circulating metabolites in cohort studies. Gut. 2022 Jun;71(6):1095-1105. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2021-324053. Epub 2021 Jun 14. PubMed PMID: 34127525; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8697256.
  5. Li J, Zhu X, Yu K, Jiang H, Zhang Y, Deng S, Cheng L, Liu X, Zhong J, Zhang X, He M, Chen W, Yuan J, Gao M, Bai Y, Han X, Liu B, Luo X, Mei W, He X, Sun S, Zhang L, Zeng H, Sun H, Liu C, Guo Y, Zhang B, Zhang Z, Huang J, Pan A, Yuan Y, Angileri F, Ming B, Zheng F, Zeng Q, Mao X, Peng Y, Mao Y, He P, Wang QK, Qi L, Hu FB, Liang L, Wu T. Genome-Wide Analysis of DNA Methylation and Acute Coronary Syndrome. Circ Res. 2017 May 26;120(11):1754-1767. doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.116.310324. Epub 2017 Mar 27. PubMed PMID: 28348007.

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