Jiyoung Ahn, PhD

Jiyoung Ahn, Ph.D., is a Professor and Associate Center Director for Population Science at the NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center and a national leader in cancer prevention, with expertise in the human microbiome, genomics, and molecular biomarkers in large cohort studies. Dr. Ahn is currently the Principal Investigator of five NIH-funded research projects.

1. Microbiome and orodigestive cancer risk. Dr. Ahn pioneered research demonstrating that oral microbiome dysbiosis is causally linked to orodigestive cancer development. In a seminal prospective study linking periodontal disease to orodigestive cancer risk (Ahn et al., Carcinogenesis, 2012), she advanced the hypothesis that oral microbial imbalance contributes to cancer development. Under NIH R01 CA159036, her team subsequently demonstrated that oral pathogenic bacteria predict future risk of head and neck cancer (Kwak et al., JAMA Oncology, 2024) and esophageal cancer (Peters et al., Cancer Research, 2017). Her team later identified oral bacteria and fungi associated with increased pancreatic cancer risk (Meng et al., JAMA Oncology, 2025), supported by NIH U01 CA16496. Mechanistic studies further showed that cancer-associated oral microbiota metabolize carcinogens and are significantly altered by smoking and alcohol use (Wu et al., ISME Journal, 2016; Fan et al., Microbiome, 2018). Collectively, these studies were the first to establish oral microbiota as a determinant of orodigestive cancer and informed the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Oral Health.

2. Microbiome and cancer treatment outcomes. Dr. Ahn’s work has also established the microbiome as a predictor of cancer outcomes and treatment response. She demonstrated that colon cancer patients exhibit distinct gut microbiome alterations, including reduced fiber-fermenting Clostridia and increased Fusobacterium (Ahn et al., JNCI, 2013). Her group further showed that microbiome features, combined with peripheral blood gene expression, improve recurrence risk prediction in early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (Peters et al., Genome Medicine, 2022). In melanoma, her team demonstrated that the gut microbiome predicts recurrence (Peters et al., Genome Medicine, 2019) and immune-related toxicity (Usyk et al., Genome Medicine, 2021) following immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Her group is now translating these findings into microbiome-based risk prediction models to inform immunotherapy decision-making in a large global clinical trial (Usyk et al., in review; NYU Melanoma SPORE Project 1).

3. Asian American health disparities and cohort development. Recognizing the influence of physical and socioeconomic environments on the microbiome (Ahn et al., Annual Review of Public Health, 2021), Dr. Ahn founded FAMiLI, the only Asian American–enriched multi-ethnic cohort in the New York metropolitan area (n= 16,000), integrating microbiome, environmental, acculturation, and sociocultural data (NIH U24 ES036002). Using this cohort, her group demonstrated that neighborhood socioeconomic context shapes the gut microbiome (Kwak et al., NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes, 2023) and that dietary acculturation influences microbiota linked to colon carcinogenesis (Peters et al., ISME Journal, 2021). In parallel, she serves as New York Field Center PI of the MOSAAIC cohort (NIH UG3 HL165965), which is recruiting 11,500 Asian American and Native Hawaiian participants across four other Field Centers nationwide. Dr. Ahn recently received new R01 funding to examine the role of the microbiome in coronary atherosclerosis in Asian American populations (NIH R01 HL178710).

Dr. Ahn has mentored more than 35 junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students; all postdoctoral fellows under her direct supervision received peer-reviewed career development awards and advanced to faculty positions in academia. She serves on NIH and Department of Defense study sections, international cancer research review panels, and multiple scientific advisory boards, and has chaired several AACR conferences. Her honors include NCI Outstanding Research Awards, the NYU Dean’s List for Exceptional Faculty Research, and the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.