Dr. Hao-Wei Chang joins the Department of Medicine in the Division of Nutritional Science and Obesity Medicine as an Instructor as of April 2026.
The quest to understand what we should eat to remain healthy has been a long-standing search, even before the dawn of civilization. Today, despite numerous advancements, we still face significant challenges, such as childhood undernutrition, obesity, and related diseases. Dr. Chang’s overarching research interest is to elucidate the complex interplay among nutrition, immunology, and microbiology to improve metabolic health across the lifespan.
Dr. Chang’s PhD work and subsequent studies under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Gordon have focused on tackling childhood undernutrition. Childhood undernutrition is associated with ~45% of deaths in children under the age of five. However, children with undernutrition who received the current therapeutic intervention still have long-term complications, such as stunted growth. By investigating the dynamic relationships among diet, the gut microbiota, and host physiology, Dr. Chang and colleagues developed a novel food-based intervention, Microbiome-Directed Complementary Food-2 (MDCF-2). Compared to the conventional food-based intervention, children with undernutrition who are fed MDCF-2 exhibit better growth outcomes. This innovation has now advanced to large, multisite clinical trials supported by the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aiming to enroll more than 6,500 children worldwide.
Recognizing the importance of immune cells in development and metabolic health, Dr. Chang joined Dr. Marco Colonna’s laboratory to expand his expertise in immunology. Supported by the Nutrition Obesity Research Center’s Pilot and Feasibility Program, he examined the role of macrophages in adipose tissue vascular remodeling, uncovering a novel interplay between mural cells and perivascular macrophages. Altering this interaction reshapes vascular density in a way that protects against diet-induced obesity. After joining the Division of Nutritional Science, Dr. Chang aims to further investigate macrophage heterogeneity and intercellular communication in human adipose tissue, with the goal of uncovering immune mechanisms that regulate vascular and metabolic homeostasis in obesity.