Kou-Yi Tserng, PhD
Associate Professor
A little
background
Kou-Yi Tserng received his Ph.D.
degree in Medicinal Chemistry from the Health Science
Center of the University of Illinois at Chicago in
1974. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Clinical
Pharmacology Center of the University of Michigan at
Ann Arbor during 1974-75. Another postdoctoral training
followed from 1975-1978 at the Biological and Medical
Research Division of Argonne National Laboratory at Argonne,
Illinois.
Subsequently (1978-1983), he joined
the Pediatric Metabolism Division of the Department
of Pediatrics at MetroHealth Medical Center (affiliated with CWRU)
as an Assistant Professor.
In 1983, he moved to the Medical
Research Service of Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical
Center with Assistant Professor appointments from
the Departments of Pharmacology and Medicine. In 1991, he joined the
Department of Nutrition.
Subsequently, he became Associate
Professor in 1992. He has been associated with
CWRU since 1978.
RESEARCH
INTERESTS
Fatty acids are major metabolic fuels to provide energy. The major metabolic
route for their oxidation is beta-oxidation. In addition, omega-oxidation also
contributes to some significant extent. A defect in the enzymes along these
metabolic pathways often has detrimental effect. In the past several years,
a number of inborn errors of metabolism resulting from defects in fatty acid
enzymes has been recognized.
However, the specific site of defect in even more cases with abnormal fatty
acid metabolism has not been elucidated. The recognition and the elucidation
of the specific site of the defect will facilitate the development of nutritional
intervention or drug therapy to these patients. Our approaches to the studies
of these defects are:
(1) profiling of urinary metabolites with gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry;
(2) the studies of metabolic pathways using rat model and specific inhibitors
of fatty acid enzymes using stable isotope tracer techniques.
Unsaturated fatty acids have been known to have
beneficial effects to lipid profile related cardiovascular
diseases. The metabolism of these acids has been
shown to be NADPH-dependent and involves the reduction of double bonds.
The enzymology and the pathways will continue to be the focus of my
research projects.
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