The central theme of the research in the Pennathur has focused on the applications of biological mass spectrometry in disease pathogenesis.

A major focus of the lab has been to define the role of oxidative stress on disease pathogenesis and complications, including diabetic complications, chronic kidney disease, autoimmune disease and cardiovascular disease. The lab has utilized mass spectrometry to identify key protein and metabolite alterations in disease states and tested the hypothesis whether these alterations predict complications in animal models and humans.

The strategy of the lab has been to develop analytical techniques in animal models and validate these markers in humans and then interrogating the animal model for biological pathway relevance. Recent extensions of this work have included targeted as well as untargetted metabolomic and proteomic profiling.

Source: https://pennathur.med.umich.edu/