Dr. Xinzhu Pu has a Ph.D. in Toxicology from Purdue University, a Master's in Environmental Health from Beijing Medical University in Beijing, China, and an M.D. from Anhui Medical University in Hefei, China. He also is a certified Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology (DABT). Dr. Pu has been an Assistant Professor at Beijing Medical University, a research and teaching assistant while at Purdue University, and then a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Scientist with the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Indiana University in Indianapolis. He came to Boise State University in 2010 where he conducts research in the Department of Biological Sciences.
Dr. Pu's research interests include the role of Kupffer cells in liver cancer development, the role of oxidative stress in acrylonitrile-induced brain tumors, the development of novel antimicrobial agents targeting quorum sensing in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and the discovery and development of natural drug products from sagebrush plants. He studies the evolutionary diversity of plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) and the evolutionary diversity of receptor targets and mechanisms of absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity (ADMET) of PSMs in animals, metabolomic profiling of PSMs in sagebrush using a High Performance Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) approach, and LC-MS/MS based proteomics in herbivores exposed to PSMs.