Research
Professor Ah-Ng Tony Kong’s current interest integrates epigenetics/epigenomics; dietary phytochemicals/botanicals/herbal medicinal products; diseases prevention including cancer chemoprevention; Nrf2-mediated anti-oxidative stress and anti-inflammatory signaling; in vivo animal models; drug absorption of various formulations of drug products; drug metabolism (phase I, II drug metabolizing enzymes and phase III transporters); pharmacogenomics (microarray, CHiP-CHIP technology, bioinformatics); pharmacokinetics (PK)/pharmacodynamics (PD); and PK-PD modeling. The current research theme in my laboratory integrates pharmacokinetics, pharmacogenomics, drug metabolism/transport, dietary phytochemicals, cancer chemoprevention, Nrf2-mediated redox signaling and pharmacodynamic responses in 3 major foci. (1) Studies of botanicals/dietary/herbal medicinal phytochemicals mediated cellular signaling and diseases prevention such as cancer chemoprevention. Many phytochemicals have been shown to possess health beneficial effects. My laboratory is utilizing the latest molecular, cellular, genomics, epigenetics/epigenomics, and LC-MS-MS to interrogate the biological responses elicited by these health promoting phytochemicals using a combination of various mammalian cell lines coupled with different animal cancer models including TRAMP (prostate), APCmin (intestinal), DSS (colon inflammatory model) AOM-DSS (colon cancer), Nrf2-/- (skin, colon and prostate). (2) Nrf2-mediated redox signaling in anti-oxidative stress and anti-inflammatory. Nrf2 is the key transcription factor regulating the antioxidant response element (ARE)-mediated Phase II drug metabolizing enzymes (DME) /Phase III transporters and anti-oxidative stress genes. The latest molecular, cellular and epigenetics/epigenomics technologies are utilized to study Nrf2-mediated signaling mechanisms in vitro and in vivo. (3) Pharmacokinetics, drug metabolism/transport, pharmacodynamics and personalized medicine. Many phenolic compounds/phytochemicals have poor in vivo bioavailability (systemic absorption) and may render them ineffective and/or required higher doses. We are trying to understand the absorption, metabolism and transport of xenobiotics in vivo resulting in appropriate blood and tissue levels resulting in the pharmacodynamic (PD) responses in tissues to elicit the biological effects. Differences between individuals (due to genetic polymorphism and or epigenetics/epigenomics) in drug metabolizing enzymes, transporters as well as target sites (receptors, enzymes or RNAs) would yield different responses between individuals to the same doses of drugs, botanicals/phytochemicals or xenobiotics in human.