Principal Investigator
Principal Investigator
Name:Donghai Wu
Professional:Principle Investigator
Email:wu_donghai@gibh.ac.cn
Address:No.190 Kaiyuan Road, Guangzhou Science Park, Luogang District, Guangzhou 510530
Study/Work Experience

2004.10now 

Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences/

Professor/Principle Investigator

2004.072004.09

National University of Singapore/

Visiting Professor, DBS

1998.112004.06

University of Florida/Assistant Professor

1994.081998.10

Univ. of Kentucky/Assistant Professor

1992.081994.07

Univ. of Kentucky/Research Assistant Professor

1990.121992.07

UT Southwestern/Post doctoral fellow

1985.081990.11

UT Southwestern/Ph.D


Research Areas

The long term goal of Dr.Wu’s lab is to focus on metabolic diseases, to investigate the molecular mechanism of obesity, type 2 diabetes, NAFLD and so on, to screen new compounds and to develop new and effective therapeutic strategies for the early diagnosis and treatment of these diseases.

Academic Performance

In recent years, Dr.Wu’s research team has focused on the following projects: 1) Generation of a mouse model for quantitative study of browning of white adipocytes, which can be used to directly look for the new browning factors of white adipocytes both in vivo and in vitro. This work was published in Diabetes 2017; 2) Discovery of a natural compound, Formononetin, in Astragalus membranaceus,  that acts as a partial agonist of PPARgamma to promote browning of white adipocytes and resist obesity induced by high-fat diet in mice. This work was published on British Journal of Pharmacology. 3) Discovery of a small molecule drug, Bexarotene, to enhance the formation of brown adipocytes and resist obesity by using a brown adipocyte trans-differentiation screening platform. This work was published on Cell Reports in 2017. Overall, Dr. Wu has published 27 professional papers as a corresponding author since his return to China in 2004. He was invited to attend international conferences and presented 12 seminars and has applied for 17 patents.

Representative Papers

1. Nie T, Zhao S, Mao L, Yang Y, Sun W, Wu D*. The natural compound, formononetin, extracted from Astragalus membranaceus increases adipocyte thermogenesis by modulating PPARγ activity. Br J Pharmacol. 2018 May;175(9):1439-1450

2. Mao L, Lei J, Schoemaker MH, Ma B, Zhong Y,……,Wu D*. Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids and extensively hydrolyzed casein-induced browning in a Ucp-1 reporter mouse model of obesity. Food Funct. 2018 Apr;9(4):2362-2373

3. Mao L, Nie B, Nie T,……,Wu D*. Visualization and quantification of “Browning” using a Ucp1-2A-luciferase knockin mouse model. Diabetes. 2017 Feb;66(2):407-417

4. Nie B, Nie T, Hui X, Gu P,……, Wu D*, Ding S*. Brown Adipogenic Reprogramming Induced by a Small Molecule. Cell Rep. 2017 Jan;18(3):624-635

5. Huang Z, Zhong L, Lee JTH, Zhang J, Wu D, Geng L,……, Wang Y, Wong CM, Xu AM. The FGF21-CCL11 Axis Mediates Beiging of White Adipose Tissues by Coupling Sympathetic Nervous System to Type 2 Immunity. Cell Metabolism. 2017 Sep;26(3):493-508