Welcome to the Son Lab (Perinatal Exercise Therapeutics & Genomics Lab) Homepage!

Our lab is based in the Division of Basic Science at the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences as well as the Department of Physiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“My research program is not designed simply to demonstrate the exercise benefits. Rather, my long-term goal is to develop therapeutics that can deliver selected protective exercise effects to individuals who want to exercise but are unable to do so because of pregnancy complications, obesity, diabetes, aging, injury, disability, or chronic disease.” 

For this, I use exercise as a biological discovery platform to identify endogenous therapeutic signals and convert them into pharmacologic, biologic, and biomarker-guided intervention strategies. 

We explore that exercise and physical activity induce muscle to secrete hormones, so called exerkines, which are beneficial for glucose homeostasis particularly in women with obesity and metabolic diseases. Similarly, maternal exercise stimulates secretion of exerkines from muscle and fat, which exert biological effects on placenta. As a key organ responsible for nutrient delivery and cross-talk between mothers and their fetuses, such change in placenta is expected to have profound impacts on fetal development and exert long-term effects on the metabolic health of future generation. We are particularly developing a cell-free therapeutic approach using extracellular vesicles (EVs) produced by hiPSCs after exercise hormone treatement.

Our laboratory focuses on the impact of maternal exercise, obesity and other physiological environments on fetal development and offspring health, emphasizing the epigenetic modification linking nutrients/metabolites to stem (progenitor) cell differentiation into myocytes/adipocytes. Ultimately, we aim to translate our work into clinical practice with respect to improving health outcomes for mothers and children affected by obesity and metabolic dysfunction.

Our team consists of physiologists, biomedical scientists and clinicians. We work together in a highly collaborative environment.