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NIH-funded research could affect treatment of metabolic disorders

Undergraduate students assigned to the research project work in a lab at the Center for Natural Sciences in Fall 2019.

Through a three-year, $370,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jeong-Ho Kim, associate professor of biology at Liberty University’s School of Health Sciences, has been working alongside his students on a study that he hopes will help physicians care for patients with metabolic disorders, such as diabetes and obesity, as well as cancer.

The grant is from the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and “supports basic research that increases understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention,” according to the organization’s website.

The Liberty study, “Receptor-mediated Glucose Sensing in Yeast,” focuses specifically on the role of the yeast cell surface glucose receptor proteins in detecting extracellular glucose levels outside the cell.

Glucose is the most abundant simple sugar in nature and most cells have developed ways to sense glucose and use it as their primary energy source.

Rebecca Rodriguez participated in the NIH study and won first place in Liberty’s Research Week 2020 for her work on the project.

“Defects in glucose sensing and its metabolism are at the root of a number of metabolic disorders,” Kim said. “Thus, learning how cells sense and respond to glucose is of great interest and major significance.”

The support from the NIH is proof that his research project not only has intellectual merits but also has broader impacts on science. Kim’s research has been supported by the NIH for many years, including previous studies on aerobic glycolysis — a hallmark of cancer — using yeast as a model. The grant will allow him to take his research to the next level, he said.

The current project began last July and has involved faculty and students from different biomedical disciplines.

“I offer an eight to 10-week research program during the summer — the Summer Research Program in Cell and Molecular Biology — that is open to undergraduate students,” Kim explained. “Four students participated in the program last year, and their research was presented at the 2019 ASCB (American Society for Cell Biology)/EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) international meeting Dec. 7-11 in Washington, D.C.”

Dr. Jeong-Ho Kim, associate professor of biology at Liberty University’s School of Health Sciences, oversees the thre-year NIH grant.

Kim said the summer program will continue this year with four undergraduate students. The project is ongoing and is scheduled to continue throughout the 2020-21 academic year.

Rebecca Rodriguez, a biomedical sciences major who recently won first place in Liberty’s Digital Research Week 2020 for her work on the project, said the opportunity to present the research locally and at an international level “really made me feel like part of the global scientific community.”

“The fact that the NIH believes in the research enough to invest in it is very humbling,” she added, “and I’m very grateful for the experience to be able to conduct research alongside Dr. Kim because he is a very distinguished scientist within the community.”

Kim joined the Liberty faculty in August 2018 and says that as a Christian he had always wanted to teach at a Christian university at some point in his career. He previously taught at George Washington University Medical School in Washington, D.C., and at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo.

“I’m grateful to God for giving me this wonderful opportunity to teach and to continue my research at Liberty,” Kim said. “I pray that this grant helps expose as many students as possible to biomedical research and strengthen the research environment at Liberty.”

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