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Biography
Dr. Huang received his MS and PhD in Experimental Pathology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Cincinnati, OH, prior to joining the Medical University of South Carolina faculty in the Department of Medicine.
The incidence of diabetes have risen alarmingly in the US, and along with it the incidence of associated cardiovascular disease like atherosclerosis. Efforts to treat these complications are complicated by limited understanding of how the primary disease of diabetes relates to the development of its multiple complications, or of how these secondary illnesses may interact with one another.
Dr. Huang’s lab has focused on exploring the links between diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and periodontal disease. Recently, they have found that atherosclerosis incidence is closely related to NAFLD in the setting of type 2 diabetes, with a mechanistic link of systemic inflammatory signaling emanating from the diseased liver. Consequently, their research has focused on the effective treatment of NAFLD and NAFLD-associated inflammatory signals, without which anti-atherosclerotic treatment is relatively ineffective.
Specifically, the Huang lab is focused on understanding how altered fatty acid metabolism, sphingolipid compounds, and microbial toxins like LPS synergistically activate inflammatory hepatic signaling. Other efforts are testing the ability of inhibitory drugs to intercept such signaling, restore hepatic metabolism and quell inflammation in order to limit vascular damage.