Dr. Lu is a Professor at the Department of Population Health and Health Disparities, School of Public and Population Health, and has a joint appointment at Department of Nutrition and Metabolism at School of Health Profession. With a training in pharmacy and medicinal chemistry, she was the first to discover that the methylation at the 5-position of cytosine in nucleic acids can be inhibited by an antileukemic drug, 5-azacytidine. She has found that fetal tissues have the ability to metabolize environmental chemicals to induce DNA adducts which may be involved in transplacental and chemical carcinogenesis. Her most recent major research interest, however, is the prevention of breast cancer through dietary means. She has been studying the effects of soy components such as soy isoflavones or soy proteins on biomarkers that are risk indicators of several chronic diseases such as mammographic density for breast cancer, blood pressure for cardiovascular diseases, and bone mineral density for osteoporosis. She chose to study soy effects in premenopausal women anticipating that application of soy diets to populations required a life-long exposure. She and her interdisciplinary team have investigated the potential health effects of soy through controlled feeding studies on a metabolic unit and randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials on ambulatory subjects. Her team found and proposed that soy isoflavones may be a new class of compounds participated in the homeostasis of calcium and blood pressure. Her team also found that soy isoflavones reduced mammographic density which may played a role in breast cancer risk reduction. She and her team continue to research the molecular and endocrine mechanisms that soy isoflavones may be used to improve population health.

Curriculum Vitae - CV