Yuxiang Sun, M.D., Ph.D., is the Interim Associate Director for Precision Nutrition at the Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture, IHA, and a Professor in the Department of Nutrition at Texas A&M University. She is also a Chancellor’s Enhancing Development and Generating Excellence in Scholarship, EDGES, Fellow and an AgriLife Research Faculty Fellow.
Dr. Sun is an internationally recognized leader in ghrelin biology. The “hunger hormone” ghrelin is one of the three most important metabolic hormones in the body, alongside insulin and leptin. Her pioneering research established ghrelin as a central nutrient-sensing hormone with critical functions in both central and peripheral tissues. She developed foundational genetic mouse models and made field-defining discoveries revealing novel roles of ghrelin signaling in energy balance, glycemic control, immunity and aging. Her work positioned ghrelin as a key metabolic regulator and immunomodulator with broad relevance to obesity, diabetes, liver disease, aging and neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Sun’s laboratory works at the intersection of immunometabolism, inflammaging and neuroinflammation, which are newly emerged interdisciplinary frontiers in biomedical research. Her recent work focuses on macrophage-mediated immune programming in adipose tissue, liver (steatohepatitis and liver cancer) and the gut (inflammatory bowel disease), as well as neuroinflammation and Alzheimer’s disease. Her discoveries demonstrate that the ghrelin receptor (GHSR) functions not only as a hunger signal but also as a major regulator of metabolism and immunity. Suppression of GHSR shifts physiological programs from obesogenesis to thermogenesis and from pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory immune states. These transformative findings reveal GHSR as a promising therapeutic target for metabolic and inflammatory diseases. Because chronic inflammation is a hallmark of aging, GHSR may also offer a novel immunotherapeutic strategy to combat age-associated diseases and improve healthspan.
Dr. Sun’s work has advanced our understanding of how nutrient sensing integrates metabolism, immunity and brain health. Her current focus is to delineate how ghrelin signaling contributes to disease across different tissues, health states and life stages to advance precision nutrition. Her long-term research goal is to translate preclinical mechanistic discoveries into biomarkers and actionable interventions that promote disease prevention/treatment and improve quality of life.