Yan, Shengmin

Shengmin Yan has a broad background in liver diseases, with specific training and expertise in hepatotoxicity, fatty liver diseases, gut-liver interaction and laboratory medicine. Yan's research includes basic and translational research in obesity, nonalcoholic fatty liver diseases (NAFLD), alcoholic fatty liver diseases, drug-induced liver injury and environmental hepatotoxicity. He laid the groundwork for the proposed research by developing effective in vivo animal models and in vitro models, and by applying novel techniques including miRNA array, proteomic analysis, 16S sequencing analysis, and other molecular biology technologies. His doctoral thesis focused on the mechanistic discoveries of hepatotoxicity of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Specifically, he found the alteration of circulating microRNA profiles in PFOA exposed mice and elucidated several novel mechanisms (e.g., SREBPs activation, autophagy suppression, and ER-stress) of PFOA-induced hepatic steatosis and injury.

His postdoctoral work has extended his expertise in hepatotoxicity to autophagy-related liver dysfunction and fatty liver diseases. By using multiple different mouse strains, he tested the impact of hepatic autophagy deficiency in alcohol-related liver diseases and the impact of gut microbiota in diet-induced obesity and autophagy deficiency-induced liver injury. In addition, he successfully collaborated with other researchers and produced many peer-reviewed publications from each project including Hepatology, Autophagy and many others. His current research interests include 1) the impact of immunometabolism in the progression of NAFLD/nonalcoholic steatohepatitis; 2) the role of autophagy in cholestatic liver injury; and 3) blood–bile barrier and alcoholic liver disease; and 4) the formation and physiological functions of protein condensates in liver diseases, such as Mallory-Denk bodies.