Nipun Saini, PhD

About

Dr. Nipun Saini, Assistant Professor of Nutrition, is working on understanding the metabolic adaptations that occur in the mother and fetus to support a healthy pregnancy, and how mal-adaptation to stressors such as alcohol, malnutrition, obesity, and diabetes impairs fetal growth and brain development.

Dr. Saini currently focuses her expertise on understanding the changes in the macronutrient (glucose and lipids) utilization in maternal-fetal dyad in alcohol-exposed pregnancies and the consequences of this disruption on fetal outcomes, and long-term offspring health. Alcohol’s impact on maternal metabolism and its contribution to impaired fetal development is a neglected area in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) research. Dr. Saini's research fills a gap and creates a niche in an important, but neglected area of prenatal alcohol research, wherein maternal metabolism is a driver and contributes to fetal growth impairments which predict cognitive deficits in FASD. Dr. Saini's work is supported by the K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

Dr. Saini was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute. In 2022, she was awarded with the Postdoctoral Award for Research Excellence (PARE) by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, UNC Chapel Hill for her work.

Honors and Awards

Postdoctoral Award for Research Excellence (PARE)
2022, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Outstanding Animal Care award
2015, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), University of Nebraska-Lincoln

New Investigator Award for graduate research work
2012, International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL)

Research Activities

Maternal- Fetal metabolism, nutritional biochemistry, maternal-fetal nutrition

Key Publications

Alcohol reduces fetal growth by promoting maladaptation to insulin resistance that limits fetal glucose availability and enhance fetal gluconeogenesis. Saini N, Mooney SM, and Smith SM  (2023). FASEB J, 37(10).

Untargeted metabolome analysis reveals reductions in maternal hepatic glucose and amino acid content that correlate with fetal organ weights in a mouse model of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. Saini N, Virdee MS, Helfrich KK, Kwan STC, Mooney SM, and Smith SM (2022). Nutrients, 14(5).

Global metabolic profiling reveals distinct hepatic metabolite fingerprints of the C57Bl/6J mouse dam and fetus in pregnancy. Saini N, Virdee MS, Helfrich KK, Kwan STC, and Smith SM (2021). Metabolomics, 17(2).

An enriched biosignature of gut microbiota-dependent metabolites characterizes maternal plasma in a mouse model of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Virdee MS, Saini N, Kay CD, Neilson AP, Kwan STC, Helfrich KK, Mooney SM, and Smith SM  (2021). Sci Reports, 11(1).

Education