Dr. Yu Wang joined the Chair of Food Chemistry and Molecular Sensory Science as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the beginning of November 2010. She was born in China, and completed her PhD in Food Chemistry at the State University of New Jersey, USA. Her PhD research was in the field of flavor chemistry and natural product chemistry. Thereafter, she worked as a postdoctoral associate in biochemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Boston) with special emphasis on the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colon cancer by using “omics” approaches.

Her research to be performed at TUM is in the field of bioactive natural products relating to anti-diabetes/obesity. This project is about studying the inhibition of glucose transporters to increase the secretion of insulin or reduce the glucose level in blood and prevent diabetes/obesity. Diabetes, as a symptom of disordered metabolism, is recognized as an increasing threat to our society in the future. Until now, effective cures of diabetes are not available, and the treatments only focus on the attenuating diabetic symptoms. Lowering blood glucose level is the major way in diabetes treatments, among which the regulation of glucose transporters becomes a novel and promising target.

Many traditional Chinese medicines have been used to prevent high blood sugar for thousands of years in China, most of their principal bioactive compounds and therapeutic mechanisms are still unknown. Therefore, Chinese herbs have been chosen as the major study materials to discover novel, naturally occurring inhibitors for the glucose transporters. This study will be conducted as a novel approach to the treatment of diabetes. It will eventually lead to a QSAR-based design of novel anti-diabetes drugs according to the structural characteristics of the identified bioactive compounds.