Back to Directory

Yuanyuan (Rose) Li

Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor

Nutrition & Food Science Skinner Building Suite 0119C College Park, MD 20742
301 405-0776

Expertise

  • Cancer Prevention
  • Metabolism and Obesity
  • Clinical Nutrition
  • Diet-related chronic disease prevention and management
  • Gut microbiome
  • Gene-nutrient Regulation

Dr. Li’s research focuses on studying how healthy foods and their bioactive compounds can help prevent cancer, obesity, and other chronic diseases. Her research explores how diet affects gene activity, gut bacteria, metabolism, and inflammation throughout lifetime. Dr. Li is particularly interested in how nutrition and diet influence pregnant women’s health and reduce the risk of certain diseases in the babies later in life. Her team also conducts clinical nutrition studies in people, including cancer survivors, to turn laboratory discoveries into practical dietary strategies. In her future study, she aims to combine nutrition research with AI to better understand why people respond differently to the same foods and develop more personalized approaches to healthy eating, disease prevention, and long-term well-being. Dr. Li strives to apply her research in human studies that eventually improves community health and benefits public welfare in the future.

RESEARCH FOCUS

  • Maternal and early-life nutrition on prevention of breast cancer and metabolic disorders later in the offspring through modulation of gut microbiome and host metabolome.
  • Translational studies and clinical trials of nutrition interventions for breast cancer, obesity, metabolic disorders.
  • AI-guided integration of dietary, metabolic, microbial, and clinical data to predict individual responses and develop precision-nutrition strategies for chronic disease prevention.
  • Nutrition intervention on aging epigenetics.
  • Epigenetic regulations of bioactive nutrient compounds in cancer prevention and therapy.

EDUCATION

M.D. Shanxi Medical College, China (Clinical Medicine)

M.S. Dalian Medical College, China (Pathology)

Ph.D. Peking Union Medical College, China (Oncology)

RECENT FUNDING

1. AGNR’s Advancing Our Strategic Initiatives Fearlessly Forward grant (Role: Principal Investigator)   02/2025-06/2027

2. MPower Junior TTK Track awards (Role: Principal Investigator) 02/2026-02/2027

3. USDA NIFA Award (Role: Principal Investigator) 01/2021-12/31/2026

4. UMB ICTR Accelerated Translational Incubator Pilot Grant (Role: Principal Investigator)   05/2025-11/2026  

5. Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station (Role: Principal Investigator)   01/2024-06/2025

6. NIH K01 Award (Role: Principal Investigator)   03/01/2017-08/31/2022

RECENT PUBLICATIONS (*denotes corresponding author)

  1. Wang X. and Li Y*. Advances in cancer immunotherapy: underlying the mechanisms of inflammasome regulation from preclinical and nutritional insights. International Immunopharmacology.  2026 Jul 1:180:116737.doi: 10.1016/j.intimp.2026.116737.

  2. Bigman G., Kleckner A, Li Y., Dennis E., Ryan A. and Sorkin J. Dietary intake of live microbes is inversely associated with fatigue and modified by serum folate among adults aged 40 years or more. Maturitas, 2026, Volume 207, 108868. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2026.108868

  3. Durojaye T., Ganguly S., Li Y., Tollefsbol T.O. Nutrition-Based Paternal Influence on Gynecological Diseases in Female Offspring via Epigenetic Mechanisms. Nutrients, 2025, 17(23), 3690; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu17233690.

  4. Li Y* and Tollefsbol T.O. Editorial: Metabolism, Gut Microbiome, and Cancer. Frontiers in Oncology. 2025, 15:1647690. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1647690.

  5. Li Y* Nutrition Intervention in Gynecological Diseases. Nutrients, 2025, 17, 2238. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu17132238.

  6. Bankole T and Li Y*. The early-life gut microbiome in common pediatric diseases: roles and therapeutic implications. Frontiers in Nutrition. 2025, 12:1597206. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1597206.

  7. Jiang Y, Li Y*. The role of nutrition and gut microbiome in childhood brain development and behavior. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2025,12:1590172.  doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1590172.

  8. Jiang Y, Li Y*. Nutrition intervention and microbiome modulation in the management of breast cancer. Nutrients, 2024, 16(16), 2644; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16162644. Selected as Editor-Choice-Article

  9. Bankole, T., T. Ma, I. Arora, Z. Lei, M. Raju, Z. Li, and Li Y*. The Effect of Broccoli Glucoraphanin Supplementation on Ameliorating High-Fat-Diet-Induced Obesity through the Gut Microbiome and Metabolome Interface. Mol Nutr Food Res, 2024, 68, no. 9: e2300856.

  10. Arora I., Li S., Crowley M., Li Y*., Tollefsbol T.O. Genome-wide analysis on transcriptome and methylome in prevention of mammary tumor induced by early-life combined botanicals. Cells, 2023, 12(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/cells12010014.

  11. Bankole, T., Winn H., Li Y*.  Dietary Impacts on Gestational Diabetes: Connection between Gut Microbiome and Epigenetic Mechanisms. Nutrients, 2022, 14(24), 5269; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14245269.

  12. Chen M., Li S., Arora I., Yi N., Sharma M., Li Z., Tollefsbol T.O., Li Y*. Maternal soybean diet on prevention of obesity-related breast cancer through early-life gut microbiome and epigenetic regulation. Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, 2022, Aug 3;110:109119. doi: 10.1016/j.jnutbio.2022.109119. 

  13. Arora I., Sharma M., Li S., Crowley M., Crossman D., Li Y*., Tollefsbol T.O. An integrated analysis of the effects of maternal broccoli sprouts on transcriptome and methylome in prevention of offspring breast cancer. PLoS ONE, 2022, 17(3):e0264858.

  14. Chen M., Li S., Srinivasasainagendra V., Sharma M., Li Z., Tiwari H., Tollefsbol T.O., Li Y*. Maternal soybean genistein on prevention of later-life breast cancer through inherited epigenetic regulations. Carcinogenesis,2022,43(3):190-202.

  15. Sharma M, Arora I, Chen M, Wu H, Crowley M, Tollefsbol T.O., Li Y*, Therapeutic effects of dietary soybean genistein on triple-negative breast cancer via regulation of epigenetic mechanisms. Nutrients,2021, 13, 3944.  Received Trygve Tollefsbol Best Paper Endowed Award in Biology and highlighted at the website of SNI Global and the United Soybean Board.

  16. Arora I, Li Y, Sharma M, Crowley M, Crossman D, Li S, Tollefsbol T.O., Systematic integrated analyses of methylomic and transcriptomic impacts of early combined botanicals on estrogen receptor-negative mammary cancer. Scientific Reports, 2021 May 4;11(1):9481.

  17. Li Y*. Advanced Epigenetics Methods in Biomedicine. Methods, Editorial 2021. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth. 2021.01.010

  18. Sharma M, Arora I, Stoll M, Li Y, Morrow C, Barnes S, Berryhill T, Li S, Tollefsbol T.O., Nutritional combinatorial impact on the gut microbiota and plasma short-chain fatty acids levels in the prevention of mammary cancer in Her2/neu estrogen receptor-negative transgenic mice. PLoS one. 2020 Dec 31;15(12):e0234893.

  19. Li Y*. Modern Epigenetics Methods in Biological Research. Methods. 2020 Jul 6;S1046-2023(19)30346-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2020.06.022.

  20. Li S, Chen M, Wu H, Li Y*, Tollefsbol TO. Maternal Epigenetic Regulation Contributes to Prevention of Estrogen Receptor-negative Mammary Cancer with Broccoli Sprout Consumption. Cancer Prev Res (Phila). 2020 May;13(5):449-462. doi: 10.1158/1940-6207. Featured on the journal homepage.

TEACHING

  1. NFSC315 Nutrition through lifecycle (3 credits)

  2. NFSC455 Medical Nutrition Therapy (4 credits)

  3. NFSC 437/637 Precision Nutrition and human Health (3 credits)