Nutraceuticals for better health - a public lecture by Jun Lu
| Date: | Tuesday 6 Oct, 4:30pm - 5:30pm |
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| Location: | 55 Wellesley Street EastAuckland 1010 Auckland New Zealand |
| Cost: | Free |
Inaugural professorial address by Jun Lu
We are what we eat. Humans probably have the widest spectrum of edible source in the animal kingdom. We learn from our experience and history about what things are edible and for what purpose. Nowadays, people realise that eat appropriate food and supplement can prevent certain diseases. Governments also notice that disease prevention is important, because it reduces the health burden of the country. Hence, nutraceutical studies become an attractive field of health and biomedical research.
Professor Jun Lu is an expert in biomedical science whose research focus is to use biomedical and pharmacological tools to study nutraceuticals in human health. Most of his work has focussed on extracting bioactive components from various food source, particularly from seafood, and investigating their various health benefits, mainly in non-communicable diseases such as diabetes. His research also extends to finding biomarkers for diabetes risk prediction.
In his inaugural professorial address, Professor Lu will discuss the development of nutraceutical research in New Zealand seafood products, including seaweed, clam and mussel, with special focus on natural compounds extracted from seaweed, including fucoxanthin and fucoidan.
Jun grew up in Shanghai, China and went to East China Normal University to study Environmental Science. He then moved to New Zealand and pursued a Master study in marine biology at the University of Auckland. A twist in the fate saw him went on to complete a PhD degree in cancer pharmacology instead of marine biology at the University of Auckland. He then spent 6 years to do diabetes research as a research fellow at the University of Auckland.
He moved to AUT in 2009 and established a biomedical science major and a biomedical research laboratory in School of Science. Internationally, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the section “Drug Discovery and Development” of the journal Biomedicines (impact factor 4.717), an editorial board member of Biomolecules (impact factor 4.082), an Associate Editor of journals Frontiers in Pharmacology (impact factor 4.225), Frontiers in Nutrition (impact factor 3.365) and Heliyon.