Research Interests:

My research focuses on the development of metabolomics and lipidomics tools to investigate aspects of how nutrition interacts with health. In addition I have a long standing interest in environmental toxicology. Key interests include:

The use of metabolomics and lipidomics to monitor diet and nutrition.

The development of data standards and minimum reporting requirements for metabolomics (e.g. MetaboLights)

Exposomics and environmental toxicology.

Large scale applications of metabolomics to epidemiology and population disease.

Activities:

President of the Metabolomics Society (2016-2020)

Thought Leader Award in Mass Spectrometry from Agilent Corporation.

Director of the Metabolic Profiling Forum and co-organizer of Metabomeeting.

Editorial board for Genome Medicine, Metabolites and Scientific Reports.

Visiting Professor at the University of Cagliari, Italy (2011-2012; 2015-2016; 2020-1, 2023-4)

Review for UK research councils, NIH, Genome Canada, French National Research Agency, King Saud University, Icelandic Centre for Research. 

Research Outputs: 

Harshfield EL, Fauman EB, Stacey D, Paul DS, Ziemek D, Ong RMY, Danesh J, Butterworth AS, Rasheed A, Sattar T, Zameer-Ul-Asar, Saleem I, Hina Z, Ishtiaq U, Qamar N, Mallick NH, Yaqub Z, Saghir T, Rizvi SNH, Memon A, Ishaq M, Rasheed SZ, Memon FU, Jalal A, Abbas S, Frossard P, Saleheen D, Wood AM, Griffin JL, Koulman A. Genome-wide analysis of blood lipid metabolites in over 5000 South Asians reveals biological insights at cardiometabolic disease loci. BMC Med. 2021;19(1):232. doi: 10.1186/s12916-021-02087-1.

Charidemou E, Ashmore T, Li X, McNally BD, West JA, Liggi S, Harvey M, Orford E, Griffin JL. A randomized 3-way crossover study indicates that high-protein feeding induces de novo lipogenesis in healthy humans. JCI Insight. 2019;4(12):e124819. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.124819.

Cader MZ, de Almeida Rodrigues RP, West JA, Sewell GW, Md-Ibrahim MN, Reikine S, Sirago G, Unger LW, Iglesias-Romero AB, Ramshorn K, Haag LM, Saveljeva S, Ebel JF, Rosenstiel P, Kaneider NC, Lee JC, Lawley TD, Bradley A, Dougan G, Modis Y, Griffin JL, Kaser A. FAMIN Is a Multifunctional Purine Enzyme Enabling the Purine Nucleotide Cycle. Cell. 2020;180(2):278-295.e23. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.12.017.

Meadows AM, Han K, Singh K, Murgia A, McNally BD, West JA, Huffstutler RD, Powell-Wiley TM, Baumer Y, Griffin JL, Sack MN. N-arachidonylglycine is a caloric state-dependent circulating metabolite which regulates human CD4⁺T cell responsiveness. iScience. 2023;26(5):106578. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106578.

Medical Research Council Programme Grant: Mapping sleep and circadian rhythm disruption impacts on cardiometabolic disease. June 2025-May 2030. Co-I. £263,000

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Project Grant: Defining the dietary context of TMAO as a cardiovascular risk factor. PI. £644,000.

Medical Research Council, UK Equipment Grant. Equipment Grant application for Single Cell Metabolomics and Proteomics. PI. Nov 2022 - Mar 2023 £496,746.

Scottish Government: Developing metabolomics and proteomics tools to identify the provenance of foods and beverages of economic importance in Scotland. PI. April 2022 – Mar 2027. £954,000.

Scottish Government (RESAS) Underpinning National Capacity of the Strategic Research programme. PI. 1st April 2022 – 31st Mar 2027. £1,120,000.

British Heart Foundation studentship to Ethan Carter. Understanding The Role of Lipid Metabolism in Heart Failure. Role: Supervisor and grant holder. £124,000.

Supervision:

I have supervised 18 PhD students as primary supervisor to date - all within four years of submission (excluding COVID-19 extensions). I have also supervised two research MSc students as primary supervisor, and approximately 10 MSc students on taught courses for their research project component. I an the primary supervisor for one current PhD student and secondary supervisor for three students.

Teaching:

My current teaching duties include supervising on taught MSc programmes within the School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition (Nutrition, cardiovascular and pharmacology), teaching metabolism to first year medics and lecturing on the metabolic syndrome.

I am the external examiner for Part 3 Systems Biology, part of the University of Cambridge Tripos in Natural Sciences.