Clare Turnbaugh

Clare Turnbaugh has investigated the interface of gut microbiome metabolomics and cancer, characterizing how microbial metabolites including short-chain fatty acids, secondary bile acids, and tryptophan catabolites modulate cancer progression and therapy response. Her work on drug-microbiome metabolism has revealed that gut bacteria can metabolize chemotherapy drugs, altering their efficacy and toxicity in ways detectable by metabolomics. Her integrated metabolomics-microbiome analysis pipeline has become a standard approach for studying the metabolic output of the cancer-associated microbiome.