Dr. Guang Sun

At Memorial University of Newfoundland, geneticist Dr. Guang Sun is looking at the genetic reasons why overweight people seem to have so much trouble losing weight, even when they incorporate diet and exercise into their daily lives. Over 50 per cent of Canadians are overweight and about 15 per cent of adults 20 to 64 years of age are obese.

His current research involves a comparative expression study on the alteration of global mRNA profiles of human adipose tissue in response to overfeeding in obese and non-obese subjects. He is also doing a study on global RNA expression profiles in skeletal muscles in obese and non-obese young males plus their responses to acute overfeeding.

Predisposition to obesity and type 2 diabetes is largely determined by a person’s genetic background. More than 250 genes and loci have been associated with or linked to obesity, and multiple genes for type 2 diabetes. However, little is known about how many genes are involved in a specific population, for instance the Newfoundland population. This information will permit the identification of individuals at high risk for these two diseases, which will lead to more successful intervention and individual treatment.

In 2003, Dr. Sun was awarded a new three-year grant of over $142,000 per year from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for his work on human adipose tissue. This is the first large-scale genomic study funded by CIHR in Newfoundland and Labrador. He also received a $25,000 grant from Memorial University’s Medical Research Foundation for his research on skeletal muscle.

Dr. Sun has identified association and linkage between a (CT)n repeat polymorphism in the IGF-I gene and the change in fat free mass after long-term exercise training. He identified the first polymorphism in the human insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3 gene and has published several papers related to the role of gene-gene interactions in obesity.

Dr. Sun’s research is supported by $420,473 funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation that enabled him to purchase equipment for a DNA microarray facility, the first in the province. This facility allows Dr. Sun and his team to measure more than 10,000 genes in one gene chip in each experiment. Since the human genome contains between 35,000-40,000 genes in total, this means that each experiment can focus on at least one fourth the number of genes in the body, a far larger number than is feasible with other methods.

Dr. Sun holds the Novartis Professorship in Pediatric Genetics, sponsored by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc. He is a CIHR ad hoc grant reviewer and a reviewer of the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation. He has published 25 papers in peer-reviewed journals in the field of human genetics, diabetes and nutrition. He has made 35 oral or poster presentations in national and international conferences and participated in two international multi-centre studies on human obesity and diabetes.

Dr. Sun earned his medical degree in clinical medicine and a master's degree in preventive medicine from China Medical University. After several years of teaching and research, mainly in the area of preventive medicine and toxicology, he went to Japan in 1991 to pursue a PhD at Hirosaki University where he studied human nutrition and human energy expenditure. In 1996 he completed his doctorate and started a postdoctoral fellowship in medical genetics at Laval Université, Quebec. As part of his studies, Dr. Sun was also involved in a project which looked at the genetic factors in world class athletes and their genetic background to see if there were specific genes or markers which might contribute to high athletic ability. After Laval, Dr. Sun took up a second postdoctoral fellowship at the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre at Louisiana State University before joining the faculty at Memorial in 2001.

For further information, please contact Dr. Guang Sun using the Email contact form or by phone at 709 777-8661