Environmental health and toxicology; environmental epigenetics; mechanism(s) of metal carcinogenesis; development of alternative and novel prevention and treatment approaches for human diseases related to environmental exposures; and FRY gene and cancer progression.
Xuefeng Ren, PhD, MD joined the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health as an assistant professor in November 2010 as part of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences. Previously, Ren was a toxicologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ren has a unique set of knowledge and skills from his multidisciplinary training in medicine, environmental and occupational health, cancer biology and toxicology. He has extensive experience both in laboratory-based basic biomedical research and in human population study. He has been principal investigator on several research studies funded primarily by the NIH.
Ren's research interests include on understanding the pathogenic mechanism(s) of toxic heavy metals; identification of genetic/epigenetic biomarkers that reflect reprogramming of health and disease trajectories in response to environmental exposures; exploration and evaluation of the efficiency of alternative and novel approaches in the prevention and treatment of human diseases related to environmental exposures; and deciphering the role of FRY gene in cancer development and progression.