Email Address:
jlabus@ucla.edu
Work Email Address:
jlabus@mednet.ucla.edu
Fax Number:
(310) 825-1919
Work Phone Number:
(310) 206-0738
UCLA Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases
G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience
Mailing Address:
10833 Le Conte Avenue
CHS 42-210, MC 737818
Los Angeles, CA 90095
| Affiliations |
| Director, Bioinformatics |
| Professor, Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases |
| Member, Brain Research Institute, Medical Informatics GPB Home Area |
Dr. Labus is an adjunct professor in the Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases in the Department of Medicine at UCLA. She is the director for the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core in the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience at UCLA and director of the Bioinformatics Core in the UCLA Microbiome Center. She has made seminal contributions to mapping neural networks underlying visceral pain and elucidating the brain-gut–microbiome axis in humans. As a result, she was the recipient of the 2011 Master’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic or Clinical Digestive Sciences, American Gastroenterology Association.
Dr. Labus is an applied statistician with expertise in biostatistics, bioinformatics, treatment-outcome research, multimodal brain imaging, microbiome, metabolomics, and multi-omics integrative analysis using systems biology approaches including machine learning and network analysis. Her current research focused is on determining biological markers (e.g., brain, microbiome, metabolomics, cytokines, and microRNA) of disease, including chronic pain, obesity and Alzheimer’s disease. Using state-or-the-art computational, biostatistical, and bioinformatics approaches, she assesses the interaction between various levels of biological data (e.g. microbiota, metabolites, immune markers, multimodal brain imaging data) with clinical data. The overall goal of this systems-based approach is to identify and target the key regulators of multi’omics-biological disease-interaction networks in order to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms and provide new targets for treatment.
Dr. Labus was the recipient of a K08 Career Development Award, on effective connectivity of central response in irritable bowel disorder, from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). She currently serves as the primary investigator on two grants funded by the National Institute of Childhood Health and Human Development (NICHD): 1) Profiling vulvodynia subtypes based on neurobiological and behavioral endophenotypes (R01HD076756) and 2) Deriving novel biomarkers of localized provoked vulvodynia through metabolomics: A biological system-based approach (R21HD086737-01). Dr. Labus is a co-investigator on several NIH funded grants, international research collaborations, and is actively involved in mentoring undergraduate, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.