Long Nguyen, MD, MS

​

Dr. Long H. Nguyen is a Physician Investigator in the CTEU, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Gastroenterology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He previously attended the University of California, Los Angeles, followed by graduate studies at Stanford University where he obtained an M.D. in Medicine and M.S. in Epidemiology. He went on to complete a clinical and research fellowship in gastroenterology at MGH where he was mentored by Dr. Andrew T. Chan and Dr. Curtis Huttenhower. He has since established his own independent research program focused on the dietary and lifestyle determinants of the microbiome with a particular interest in gut microbial communities and their role in colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease. He is currently funded by an NIDDK K23 award, the American Gastroenterological Association's Research Scholars Award, and a Crohn's and Colitis Foundation Career Development Award.

​

Projects

​

APPL-PI: Analyzing Probiotics or Phages Linked to Phenotypes of Interest
We aim to develop a state-of-the-art computational pipeline to pinpoint strains and encoded biochemical pathways with putative bioactive roles in disease to provide a shortlist of candidate therapeutic microbiome-directed targets. Uniquely, we will also identify gut-native phage that are likely to provide the best scaffolds for engineering and catalog the gut bacterial variants they are most likely to target effectively. This investigation will build on new experimental and machine learning approaches for joint DNA and RNA viral profiling from complete gut microbial communities with subsequent predictions of their disease-relevant phage host ranges.
 

Characterizing lateral gene transfer in gut microbial communities
We propose to define the lateral gene transfer landscape in human microbial populations and understanding how host selective pressures alter this process in colorectal cancer to develop cancer prevention strategies centered upon their modulation.

​

Publications

​

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/article-abstract/2821928

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00692-5?dgcid=raven_jbs_aip_email

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016508524003093