The Systems Biology of Human Diseases Laboratory is focused on both experimental and theoretical aspects in the area of Cellular and Molecular Tissue Engineering, Metabolic Engineering, and Biomedicince with emphasis on clinical applications. Our research interests lie in the systems biology of metabolic diseases, specifically cancer. Our aim is to understand the role of metabolism in cancer progression, growth and metastasis. We use genetic and metabolic design principles to analyze healthy and diseased biological states. The outcome of our work is to discover potential therapies that exploit metabolic vulnerabilities in cancer. We are working to uncover the metabolic interactions between cancer cells and cells in neighboring tissue that support cancer growth and metastasis. Our research integrates both experimental and theoretical tools to develop a recipe for maintaining normal function of various organs. Our lab also makes a concerted effort to use engineering principles, such as multi-objective optimality and non-equilibrium thermodynamics to develop mathematical models for analyzing and understanding complex diseased states.