Carey Nien-Kai Lumeng, MD, PhD

Dr. Lumeng is the Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor for the Cure and Prevention of Birth Defects and Professor in Pediatrics and Molecular and Integrative Physiology and Director of the Division of Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Graduate Program in Immunology, the Cellular and Molecular Biology Graduate Program at the University of Michigan Medical School, and the Associate Director of the Michigan MSTP Program. The research focus of the Lumeng Laboratory is on immunometabolism and the mechanisms by which inflammation contributes to obesity-associated diseases such as type 2 diabetes and is funded by the NIH and foundations such as the American Diabetes Association.

Dr Lumeng is a graduate of Princeton University (A.B. in Molecular Biology) and received his PhD in Human Genetics and MD from the University of Michigan MSTP Program. He completed residency training in Pediatrics in the Boston Combined Pediatrics Residency Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center and completed fellowship training in Pediatric Pulmonology at the University of Michigan. Dr. Lumeng is board certified in Pediatric Pulmonology and was appointed in 2007 as faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at UM.

My research program centers on understanding the mechanisms by which obesity negatively impacts health. My laboratory strives to improve the understanding of the links between obesity and disease to enable the design of novel strategies to disrupt these connections. Work from my lab has helped contribute to the new field of immunometabolism which is focused on understanding the intersection between pathways that regulate immune responses and those that control nutrient metabolism. Towards this end, we have focused on understanding how the innate and adaptive immune system respond to dietary excess and contribute to metabolic dysfunction such as insulin resistance that are major risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Current projects in the lab focus on numerous aspects of adipose tissue immune network in health and disease. Projects focus on the regulation of adipose tissue macrophages in obesity and understanding how macrophage proliferation contributes to their regulation and polarization state. Antigen presenting cells in adipose tissue is also a focus of the lab as a link between innate and adaptive immune regulation. Translational research studies have identified novel genetic pathways relevant to metabolically unhealthy obesity phenotypes by collaborations with bariatric surgery to obtain omental and subcutaneous adipose samples. Recent efforts in the lab are using single cell and nuclear RNA sequencing approaches to delineate cellular diversity in adipose tissue in humans and mice in a team science approach with surgeons, bioinformaticians, and biologists.