Rate My Professor Christopher Gentile

Christopher Gentile, Ph.D., serves as Department Head and Professor of Nutrition Science in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition within the College of Health and Human Sciences at Colorado State University. He also directs the Integrative Cardiovascular Physiology Laboratory. Gentile earned his B.S. in Physiology from Skidmore College between 1995 and 1999. He pursued graduate studies in Nutrition at the University of Vermont from 2000 to 2001 and completed his doctoral training at the University of Colorado from 2001 to 2004. Following this, he conducted a postdoctoral fellowship in Nutrition Biochemistry at Colorado State University from 2007 to 2010, before advancing through the faculty ranks to his current leadership position.

Gentile's research program investigates the physiological mechanisms underlying obesity-induced cardiovascular dysfunction, with a strong emphasis on the gut microbiome's role in cardiometabolic diseases including heart disease and diabetes. Utilizing a translational approach that integrates isolated cell cultures, animal models, and human clinical studies, his lab explores how dietary patterns influence vascular health via microbial interactions. Notable contributions include demonstrating that suppression of gut dysbiosis reverses Western diet-induced vascular dysfunction (Battson et al., 2018), that gut microbiota modulates cardiac ischemic tolerance and aortic stiffness in obesity (Battson et al., 2019), and that transplanting obesity-associated human gut microbiota to mice promotes vascular dysfunction and glucose intolerance (Trikha et al., 2021). Additional key works encompass the therapeutic potential of microbial metabolites like indole-3-propionic acid in reducing vascular stiffness (Lee et al., 2020) and the vascular benefits of SGLT2 inhibitors in metabolic syndrome models (Lee et al., 2018). Funded by the National Institutes of Health, including a K01 career development award investigating endoplasmic reticulum stress in obesity-related vascular pathology, Gentile's scholarship has advanced the intersection of nutrition, microbiology, and cardiovascular physiology.