Establishment and Development:

Shandong University-BOP Oral Joint Microbiome Laboratory was born from a vision and passion for oral microecology and human systemic health. Recognizing the need to clarify the relationship between oral pathogen with multiple oral and/or systemic diseases, prof. Feng Qiang decided to establish a laboratory dedicated to decode the characteristics of oral microbiome and the pathogensis of key oral pathogen with multi-disciplinary knowledge. Our laboratory began with the department of human microbiome school and hospital of stomatology, Shandong University. With a giant team of interdisciplinary knowledge background, we established a research laboratory that would be recognized for its excellence and impact in the field of human microbiome. Since its inception, our laboratory has gone through a remarkable journey of growth and development, and our team members have received multiple founding supports from the National government and Shandong Province.

Team Members:

Our team consists of 1 leading scientist and 4 top experts from their respective fields, young and passionate professional researchers, and 4 staffs who are committed to provide excellence technology support. Together, they worked enthusiastically to decode the relationship between oral pathogens and oral/systemic diseases.

Research Areas:

Our laboratory focus in the field of oral microbiome and oral/systemic health. Our team is skilled at mining the human microbiome/transcriptome/single cell/ spatiotemporal omics data from oral and systemic diseases in the dry lab, and study the mechanisms between key oral pathogen and relative diseases in the wet lab. Firstly, the microbiome data were analyzed and mined to identify the key pathogenic microbes. Then, the animal model was used to simulate the pathogenic mechanism and analyze the pathology of key oral microbes. Also, the molecular mechanism of the key microbes were studied by using multiple different kind of cell models and molecular technologies. By now, we have elucidated the multiple pathogenic mechanisms of oral pathogen and oral/ systemic diseases of the molecular mechanism of pathogen adhesion, invasion and interacted with host cells to regulate gene expression, and decoding the key virulence effector proteins of oral pathogenic microbes on intracellular signaling pathways.

Research Achievements:

We have made several significant contributions on the characteristics of human microbiome and their pathogenic mechanisms, stem cell isolation and directed differentiation, and research on the resistance mechanisms of tumor-targeted drugs. Our research results have clarified the mechanism by which Fusobacterium nucleatum (F. nucleatum) invaded gingival tissue and interfered with the biological activity of oral cells. We also found that F. nucleatum significantly reduced the proliferation and osteogenic differentiation ability of stem cells by promoting cell migration and the release of related chemokines and cytokines. By studying the distribution and role of microorganisms in the tumor microenvironment, we found that F. nucleatum infection weakened the efficacy of immunotherapy by increasing Lgals9-positive mast cells.

Main Publications:

[1] Ma C, Yang C, Peng A, Sun T, Ji X, Mi J, Wei L, Shen S, Feng Q. Pan-cancer spatially resolved single-cell analysis reveals the crosstalk between cancer-associated fibroblasts and tumor microenvironment. Mol Cancer. 2023 Oct 13;22(1):170.

[2] Lai Y, Mi J, Feng Q. Fusobacterium nucleatum and Malignant Tumors of the Digestive Tract: A Mechanistic Overview. Bioengineering (Basel). 2022 Jun 28;9(7):285.

[3] Wang Y, Wang L, Sun T, Shen S, Li Z, Ma X, Gu X, Zhang X, Peng A, Xu X, Feng Q. Study of the inflammatory activating process in the early stage of Fusobacterium nucleatum infected PDLSCs. Int J Oral Sci. 2023 Feb 8;15(1):8.

[4] Shen S, Sun T, Ding X, Gu X, Wang Y, Ma X, Li Z, Gao H, Ge S, Feng Q. The exoprotein Gbp of Fusobacterium nucleatum promotes THP-1 cell lipid deposition by binding to CypA and activating PI3K-AKT/MAPK/NF-κB pathways. J Adv Res. 2023 Apr 24: S2090-1232(23)00113-3.

[5] Mi J, Wang S, Liu P, Liu C, Zhuang D, Leng X, Zhang Q, Bai F, Feng Q, Wu X. CUL4B Upregulates RUNX2 to Promote the Osteogenic Differentiation of Human Periodontal Ligament Stem Cells by Epigenetically Repressing the Expression of miR-320c and miR-372/373-3p. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022 Jun 16;10:921663.

[6] Gao H, Sun T, Yang F, Yuan J, Yang M, Kang W, Tang D, Zhang J, Feng Q. The Pathogenic Effects of Fusobacterium nucleatum on the Proliferation, Osteogenic Differentiation, and Transcriptome of Osteoblasts. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2020 Sep 11; 8:807.

[7] Kang W, Jia Z, Tang D, Zhao X, Shi J, Jia Q, He K, Feng Q. Time-Course Transcriptome Analysis for Drug Repositioning in Fusobacterium nucleatum-Infected Human Gingival Fibroblasts. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2019 Sep 20; 7:204.

[8] Kang W, Ji X, Zhang X, Tang D, Feng Q. Persistent Exposure to Fusobacterium nucleatum Triggers Chemokine/Cytokine Release and Inhibits the Proliferation and Osteogenic Differentiation Capabilities of Human Gingiva-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2019 Dec 17; 9:429.

[9] Hou Q, Pucci F, Pan F, Xue F, Rooman M, Feng Q. Using metagenomic data to boost protein structure prediction and discovery. Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2022 Jan 3; 20:434-442.

[10] Feng Q, Lan X, Ji X, Li M, Liu S, Xiong J, Yu Y, Liu Z, Xu Z, He L, Chen Y, Dong H, Chen P, Chen B, He K, Li Y. Time series analysis of microbiome and metabolome at multiple body sites in steady long-term isolation confinement. Gut. 2021 Jul;70(7):1409-1412.

Facilities & Resources:

Our state-of-the-art facilities and cutting-edge technology enable us to conduct research that is both rigorous and innovative. We have built a large computing platform, developed and installed a series of bioinformatics software under Linux, analysis tools such as SOAP, R Language, Qiime2.0, MOCAT, Cytoscape, and developed a variety of bioinformatics analysis methods. In the research of the pathogenic mechanism of oral pathogenic microbiome we have established many kinds of microbiome infection animal and cell models, it can be used to carry out a series of high-precision analyses such as microscopic image tracking, microbial toxic protein function analysis, pathogenic microbiome evolution analysis and comparative genomics analysis, protein structure simulation, protein-protein, protein-small molecule, toxic protein-host receptor interaction analysis, and pathogenic microbiome infection host research, etc.

Collaborations & Partnerships:

We believe in the power of collaboration. We have forged partnerships with Chinese University of Hong Kong, Copenhagen University, and Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine to further advance our research.

Contact:

For more information or inquiries, please contact us at fengqiang@sdu.edu.cn.