Susan Sumner, PhD
Professor of Nutrition and Pharmacology

Natural occurring chemicals found in foods (e.g., folate, choline) and beverages (e.g., polyphenols, benzoate) have been associated with both positive and negative health responses. Perturbations in endogenous metabolism have been associated with many prescription and over the counter medications, as well as illicit drugs. Metabolites of many environmentally relevant chemicals are also detected (including  phthalates, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, parabens, brominated flame retardants, tobacco products, phenols, and volatile organic compounds) which have been linked with a variety of adverse health outcomes – including obesity, cognitive delay and decline, reproductive effects, and cancer.

Dr. Sumner’s research activities in Personalized Medicine and Precision Nutrition span several domain areas of Maternal and Child Health, Diabetes and Kidney Disease, Toxicology, Cancer, Microbiome, and Addiction. In 2019, she received a grant from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to discover biomarkers and mechanisms associated with Cardiovascular Disease. She has served as the PI of a grant funded through the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to use metabolomics to reveal noninvasive markers of drug-induced liver injury, and as PI of the NIH Common Fund Eastern Regional Comprehensive Metabolomics Resource Core (ERCMRC). She previously directed the Metabolomics Core for the UNC Chapel Hill Nutrition Obesity Resource Center (NORC, funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIDDK), and an Exposome Core for the Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) program (funded by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, NIEHS).

In August of 2019, Dr. Sumner received a grant to develop new tools and conduct untargeted analysis for the NIEHS-funded Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) Program. Under this grant, untargeted analysis is used to study the complex interactions between environmental exposures throughout the lifespan and human health outcomes in the HHEAR and the Environmental Influences on Childhood Outcomes programs. In 2022, her team received an award from NCI as the NIH Common Fund Metabolomics and Clinical Assay Center as part of the NIH Nutrition for Precision Health Consortium powered by All of Us. In this role, her Center will help develop algorithms that predict individual’s responses to dietary intake.

Dr. Sumner earned a B.S. and Ph.D. in the Department of Chemistry at North Carolina State University, and conducted postdoctoral research at NHLBI.