The Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center will host Alan Tackett, Distinguished Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science, and Colin Kay, Distinguished Professor of developmental nutrition at UAMS, who will discuss their work in utilizing a broad spectrum of metabolomics techniques including quantitative metabolomics, untargeted metabolomics, microbiome, genomics and proteomics in development of a precision health program.   

This seminar will take place at 12:55 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 6, in Bell Engineering 2267.

Abstract: Arkansas Children's Research Institute and Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center are developing a precision health program, encompassing precision nutrition and precision medicine, with the goal of establishing associations between dietary and medical intervention, human metabolome, microbiome and health outcomes, leveraging past and present research studies of parent and child health at the USDA-funded ACNC and clinical research programs within Arkansas Children's Hospital and UAMS. The Precision Health program involves data integration from studies investigating the effects on treatment outcomes of various prevention and treatment strategies, utilizing a broad spectrum of metabolomics techniques, including quantitative metabolomics, untargeted metabolomics, microbiome, genomics and proteomics. Realizing precision health requires considerable research infrastructure development and involves the integration of analytics, data science and information technology; device, software, diagnostics and testing service development; and translational and educational practices. We will overview this precision health program with focus on metabolomics and proteomics resources.

Alan Tackett obtained a degree in chemistry with distinction from Hendrix College in 1998 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from UAMS in 2002. He performed postdoctoral training in cancer epigenetics and proteomics at The Rockefeller University from 2002-2005, when he joined the faculty at UAMS and has risen to the rank of distinguished professor of biochemistry and molecular biology.  He received the Sharlau Family Endowed Chair for Cancer Research in 2016 and was nominated into the Arkansas Research Alliance in 2021. He serves as deputy director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at UAMS.

Tackett has built an internationally-recognized research team focused on developing new therapeutic strategies to treat metastatic melanoma. He has published over 150 scientific articles and holds multiple patents in this area and has received over $30 million of funding from the government to support his research endeavors. He serves as director of two NIH-funded national research centers in Arkansas, a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE, Phase 2) in systems biology and the IDeA National Resource for Quantitative Proteomics.

Colin Kay obtained a Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, in 2004 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State University and the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. After eight years at the Norwich Medical School in England as assistant and associate professor, he became professor at North Carolina State University in 2022 and held the David H. Murdock Distinguished Professorship.

He joined UAMS in 2023 as professor of developmental nutrition in the Department of Pediatrics. He is director of Precision Health Research, Arkansas Children's Research Institute and scientific director of the Metabolomics and Analytical Chemistry Research Core, Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center. Kay's research is focused on development of qualitative and quantitative metabolomics methodologies for establishing the contribution of dietary phytochemicals to the human metabolome.

This seminar is also available via Zoom.

Pizza and beverages will be served.

Please contact Kimberley Fuller, fullerk@uark.edu, for more information.

This event is supported by NIGMS of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P20GM139768. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.