49th Annual Research Society on Alcohol Scientific Meeting
GRC June News
49th Annual Research Society on Alcohol (RSA) Scientific Meeting (June 20-24, 2026), San Antonio, Texas
Photo: Left- Wankun Deng, PhD, Xiangsheng Huang, PhD, and Connor Cheek, PhD (far left)
Right- Faraz Bishehsari, MD, PhD, Luca Santovito, PhD along with Collaborators from Rush University, Chicago, IL
The GRC presented 3 posters at the 49th annual Research Society on Alcohol (RSA) Scientific Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
Alcohol consumption profoundly influences the gut microbiome and its interactions with host physiology across aging, cognition, and alcohol-related disease. Our center is engaged in human and animal studies in identifying alcohol-associated microbial dysbiosis characterized by enrichment of pro-inflammatory taxa and depletion of beneficial short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing bacteria, with these microbial signatures reproducible across independent cohorts and linked to alcohol use disorder, liver fibrosis, and gut barrier dysfunction. Collectively, our findings highlight the central role of the alcohol-gut microbiome axis in mediating alcohol-related health outcomes and establish a foundation for developing microbiome-based biomarkers, enterotype classification systems, and therapeutic strategies to prevent alcohol-related organ damage and age-associated disease.
Studies presented by the GRC team:
- Alcohol and Feeding-Time Misalignment Reshape the Gut Microbiome to Promote Inflammaging. Xiangsheng Huang et al.
- Microbial Enterotype in Alcohol-Related Organ Damage. Xiangsheng Huang, Wankun Deng et al.
- Alcohol–Gut Microbiome–Cognition Links in an Elderly Population. Connor Cheek et al.
The scientific abstracts are published in the Journal Alcohol and Clinical & Experimental Research 2026. Volume 50 ;Supplement (1). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/29937175/50/S1 (external link)
PDF copy of the supplement can be found at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/acer.70314 (external link)