Dr. Lu is a Professor at the Department of Population Health and Health Disparities, School of Public and Population Health, and has a joint appointment at the Department of Nutrition and Metabolism at the School of Health Professions. With a BS in pharmacy and a PhD in medicinal chemistry, she was the first to discover that the methylation at the 5-position of cytosine in nucleic acids can be inhibited by an antileukemic drug, 5-azacytidine which became a powerful molecular tool enabling others to discover that 5-methylation of cytosine in DNA is the on-and-off switch for gene expression in DNA leading to the blossom of the field, epigenetics. She has found that fetal tissues are able to metabolize environmental chemicals to induce DNA adducts, which may be involved in transplacental and chemical carcinogenesis.
Affiliations
Department of Population Health and Health Disparities, SPPH
Department of Nutrition and Metabolism, School of Health Professions
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Cancer Center
Institute for Translational Sciences
Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women's Health
Sealy Center for Environmental Health and Medicine
Education
Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Carcinogenesis, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, 1980
PhD, Medicinal Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1972
BS, Pharmacy, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 1968
Research
Dr. Lu's most recent major research interest is on the mechanisms by which populations consuming soy as a staple food have reduced risk for breast cancer and cardiovascular diseases. She and her interdisciplinary team have been investigating the components of soy that are responsible for the endocrine, reproductive, and cardiovascular effects through controlled feeding studies on a metabolic unit and through phase II randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials on ambulatory premenopausal women.
Her team found that consumption of the phytoestrogenic soy isoflavones (i) decrease the levels of ovarian hormones and the metabolite ratio of the carcinogenic 16-OH-estrogen to the anti-carcinogenic 2-OH-estrogen; (ii) reduce breast density in a time- and concentration-dependent manner and (iii) modulate the homeostasis of calcium and blood pressure. Breast density is a well-recognized and the strongest risk predictor for breast cancer, thus a reduction in breast density is expected to reduce breast cancer risk and to increase the sensitivity of mammography in detecting breast cancer. The ability of the micronutrients, isoflavones to modulate calcium and blood pressure homeostasis explained also why populations consuming soy have reduced risk for cardiovascular diseases.
She and her team continue to research the health effects of other soy components. The goal is to implement soy as an economical and easy to incorporate functional foods for lifelong consumption that will improve the cardiovascular and breast health and minimize disparities of these diseases among populations.
