Research

The microbes that colonize our bodies influence our health and in many cases drive our disease outcomes. The literature is full of examples of specific microbial species linked to host phenotypes, such as altering susceptibility to pathogen infection, modulating immune cell levels or responses, effecting visceral fat uptake, inducing certain cancers, and even rendering cancer treatments ineffective. While many groups are pursuing microbe-based treatments (e..g, probiotics and fecal microbiota transplants), significant unresolved barriers to getting such therapies to the clinic, including FDA regulations, safety concerns, difficulties with formulation and product stability, person-to-person variability to microbial tolerance, colonization efficiencies and intended response.

The Henke Lab takes a chemical-first approach 1) to gain molecular and mechanistic understanding behind microbiome associations to health and disease and 2) to develop chemical tools that can be used to re-engineer host phenotypes or microbial community structure.

We are primarily interested in three area of research:

1) Cataloguing the functional chemical dark matter present in the human metabolome.

2) Exploring how microbial competition manifests in the gut and how this effects human health.

3) Identifying microbial molecular effectors driving human immune alterations.