Ruth Ann Luna PhD

Scientific Advisor

Microbiome Team

 

Dr Ruth Ann Luna serves as a Scientific Advisor to N of One: Autism Research Foundation and is part of its Microbiome Team.  Dr. Luna is the Director of Medical Metagenomics of the Texas Children's Microbiome Center (TCMC) at Texas Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology & Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine.  Dr. Luna’s primary research focus is the microbiome-gut-brain axis in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and is currently presiding over the largest pediatric autism microbiome study in the country.  In addition to being a leading microbiome researcher, Dr. Luna also has the added perspective of being an autism parent herself.

 

Dr. Luna has extensive experience in the latest molecular and clinical techniques used to study the composition and function of the microbiome.  She pioneered new clinical diagnostic sequencing applications and leads the 16s rRNA gene-based next-generation sequencing for microbiome characterization efforts of the hospital. In addition to autism she has recently completed microbiome-based projects in a variety of research areas including gastrointestinal (IBS, ulcerative colitis, Clostridium difficile infection) and pulmonary (cystic fibrosis, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, lung transplantation) disorders.  Dr. Luna emphasizes taking a multi-omic approach to research- combining the microbiome, metabolome, and a variety of clinical data to better understand the underlying biology.

 

 

“In the early days after my son’s diagnosis, I was fond of saying that we would practice evidence-based medicine on our n of one. It’s this approach by many parents, each forging their own path ahead of medicine and science, that has led me to pursue this research. My goal is to better characterize the many facets of autism in order to devise and test better treatments for the various subgroups that we all know exist within the spectrum.”