The overall goal of the DBDC at Harvard is to identify and validate biomarkers of major foods in the U.S. diet using state-of-the-art metabolomics techniques in both dietary intervention trials and observational studies. The Center for Clinical Investigation at Brigham and Women's Hospital brings together investigators of diverse backgrounds and wide-ranging expertise covering dietary assessment, population science, nutritional biochemistry, bioinformatics, and biotechnologies. The environment at Harvard University is highly conducive for carrying out this interdisciplinary research. With access to epidemiological studies including the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study and randomized clinical trials such as OmniHeart, MIND, and PREDIMED, the DBDC takes full advantage of the institutional commitment and resources provided by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and other participating institutions.
Site Location:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Site Contact Information:
Principal Investigators
Frank Hu, MD, PhD
Professor and Chair, Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Frank Hu is Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also a Professor of Medicine at both Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He serves as Co-director of the Program in Obesity Epidemiology and Prevention at Harvard and Director of the Epidemiology and Genetics Core at the Boston Nutrition and Obesity Research Center. His major research interests include epidemiology and prevention of cardiometabolic diseases through diet and lifestyle; gene-environment interactions; nutritional metabolomics; and nutrition transitions and cardiometabolic diseases in low- and middle-income countries. He served on the IOM Committee on Preventing the Global Epidemic of Cardiovascular Disease, the AHA/ACC Obesity Guideline Expert Panel, and the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, USDA/HHS. He has served on the editorial boards of Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, Diabetes Care, and Clinical Chemistry. Dr. Hu was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2015.
Clary Clish, PhD
Senior Director, Metabolomics Platform, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
PI, Metabolomics Core
Dr. Clary Clish is Senior Director of the Metabolomics Platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he is also an Institute Scientist.
Prior to joining the Broad Institute, Dr. Clish held senior and executive management positions in the biotechnology industry from 2001-2008, including Vice President of Discovery at Gene Logic Inc. and Director of Metabolite Biochemistry at Beyond Genomics Inc. From 1997-2001, Dr. Clish was a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in the laboratory of Dr. Charles Serhan at the Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. In the Serhan laboratory, his work focused on understanding the roles of lipid mediators in acute inflammation and its resolution, including his discovery and characterization of a new class of anti-inflammatory lipid mediators that have since been named “resolvins.”
Dr. Clish received his B.Sc. from McGill University in chemistry and biological sciences and his Ph.D. from Portland State University.
