James Edwards, Ph.D. » Investigators

Cardiovascular Research Interests:

Primary area of research:

• Metabolic mechanisms mediating diabetic cardiovascular disease

Summary of cardiovascular research:

The Edwards group develops novel metabolomic methods for elucidating biochemical changes in diabetic tissue and cells. The collective group of small endogenous molecules in a biological sample contains a large range of concentrations and polarities and a high degree of structural diversity. To analyze such a diverse group of molecules, improvements in sample preparation, separation, and mass spectrometric (MS) techniques are required.

Major projects in our laboratory include: 1) developing a biomimetic platform for the culture and metabolomics sample preparation of endothelial cells, 2) multidimensional capillary separation of acidic metabolites, and 3) tagging of metabolites based on functional groups so as to selectively improve ionization and thus MS signal. We apply these methods to the field of diabetic complications for the discovery of pathways and metabolites which change in response to hyperglycemia and oxidative stress. Our recent studies have detected over 4,000 metabolic changes from diabetic aorta using a capillary LC-MS based approach.