Felix Grün, PhDDirector, Mass Spectrometry Facility
Felix Grün has served as Director of the UCI's Mass Spectrometry Facility since 2016.
He oversees facility staff, daily facility operations, user/instrument training and has primary responsibility for small molecule analyses (LC and GC-MS), including quantitative metabolomics (targeted and untargeted) and imaging mass spectrometry applications.
He received his BA/MA (Cantab) degree in Biochemistry from Cambridge University, UK and his PhD in Immunology from Cornell University/Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, NY. He conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Pharmocology at the Weill Cornell Medical School/New York Hospital, the Nara Institute of Science & Technology (NAIST) and the Virus Research Institute, Kyoto University before joining the Department of Developmental & Cell Biology at the University of California Irvine in 1999. He has been a research scientist, lecturer and academic coordinator at UCI for the past 23 years.
His research career has been focused in the areas of retinoid (vitamin A) biology, specifically identification of novel metabolites, enzymatic activities and signaling pathways. Most notably his work on organotin activation of nuclear hormone receptos (RXR:PPARgamma) led him to coin the term environmental obesogen to describe man-made pollutants that perturb endocrine hormone signaling leading to adipogenesis, lipid accumulation and obesity.
Selected publications:
- Buck J, Grün F, Derguini D, Chen YQ, Noy N, Kimura S. and Hämmerling U. Anhydroretinol: A naturally occurring inhibitor of lymphocyte physiology. J Exp Med. (1993) 178(2): pp. 675-80. PMID: 8340762.
- Derguini D, Nakanishi K, Buck J, Hämmerling U and Grün F. Spectroscopic studies of anhydroretinol, an endogenous mammalian and insect retro-retinoid. Angewandte Chemie (Int. Ed. Engl.) (1994) 33(18), pp.1839-1841. DOI: 10.1002/anie.199418371. *equal contributions.
- Grün F, Noy N, Hämmerling U and Buck J. Purification, cloning, and bacterial expression of retinol dehydratase from Spodoptera frugiperda. J. Biol. Chem. (1996) 271(27), pp.16135-8. PMID: 8663216.
- Grün F, Hirose Y, Kawauchi S, Ogura T and Kazuhiko K. Aldehyde dehydrogenase 6, a cytosolic retinaldehyde dehydrogenase prominently expressed in sensory neuroepithelia during development. J. Biol. Chem. (2000) 275(52), pp.41210-18. PMID: 11013254.
- Grün F, Watanabe H, Zamanian Z, Maeda L, Arima K, Cubacha R, Gardiner G, Kanno J, Iguchi T and Blumberg B. Endocrine disrupting organotin compounds are potent inducers of adipogenesis in vertebrates, Mol Endo (2006) 20(9), pp.2141-2155. PMID: 16613991.
- Grün, F and Blumberg, B. Environmental obesogens: organotins and endocrine disruption via nuclear receptor signaling. Endocrinology (2006) 147(6): pp. S50-55. PMID: 16690801.
- Grün, F. “Covalent Interactions of Organotins with Nuclear Receptors” in “Biochemical and Biological Effects of Organotins”, E-book, editors A. Pagliarani, V. Ventrella and F. Trombetti, Bentham Science Publishers Ltd. (2011). Ch.3, pp. 74-95. eISBN: 978-1-60805-265-3.
- Grün, F. “The Obesogen Tributyltin” in “Vitamins & Hormones: Endocrine Disrupters”, series editor: Gerald Litwack. Academic Press/Elsevier (2014), 94C: pp277-325. DOI:10.1016/B978-0-12-800095-3.00011-0.
- Gallagher T, Riedel S, Kapcia J, Caverly LJ, Carmody L, Kalikin LM, Lu J, Phan J, Gargus M, Kagawa M, Leemans SW, Rothman JA, Grun F, LiPuma JJ, Whiteson KL. Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry Detection of Antibiotic Agents in Sputum from Persons with Cystic Fibrosis
Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2021 Jan 20;65(2):e00927-20. doi: 10.1128/AAC.00927-20. - Phillips M, Grun F, Schmitt P. Breath biomarkers of total body irradiation in non-human primates. J Breath Res. 2022 Jan 11;16(2). PMID: 34781275 doi: 10.1088/1752-7163/ac39aa.