Research
Innovating Microbial-Based Solutions for Hepatobiliary and Digestive Health
At the forefront of gastroenterology and hepatology, the Olumuyiwa Awoniyi lab endeavors to unlock the microbial mysteries intertwined with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Our goal is to illuminate the microbial-host dialogues and intestinal-hepatobiliary interplay, paving the way for groundbreaking diagnostics and therapies. Fueled by a passion for clinical excellence and scientific discovery, we are committed to refining the management of these challenging conditions, with a vision to attenuate disease progression and enhance patient care.
Biography
Olu"Muyiwa" Awoniyi, MD/PhD, grew up in Chicago, where Walter Payton was more than a Bears legend. For a generation of kids across the city, "Sweetness" was a model of what discipline and grace could look like. When Payton died in his mid-forties of bile duct cancer, a complication of primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), the disease arrived in Awoniyi's world with a name and a face: a relentless, poorly understood illness with no treatment but a liver transplant, and for Payton, not even that. Why medicine still couldn't help patients like Payton became the question that runs through everything Awoniyi does.That question led through combined MD/PhD training at the University of Washington (PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2011; MD, 2013), internal medicine residency at the University of Michigan, and fellowships in Gastroenterology & Hepatology and Transplant Hepatology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At UNC the science came into focus: in work published as first author in Gut (2023), Awoniyi showed that specific resident gut bacteria and their metabolites can either protect against or aggravate hepatobiliary inflammation and fibrosis in PSC, recasting the fate of the bile ducts as something the microbiome helps decide.
Awoniyi joined Cleveland Clinic in 2022, where he is Staff in the Hepatology Section, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. He also directs the Awoniyi Lab and a cholestatic liver disease clinic. As first author, he led the development of one of the first preclinical models to reproduce the full arc of human PSC-IBD, the Mdr2/Il10 double-knockout, and paired it with a large patient surveillance cohort to show that transferable, dysbiotic microbiota drive colitis-associated colorectal cancer and a distinctive bile-acid profile. Published in Gut in 2026, it is his second first-author paper in the journal on the microbial roots of cholestatic disease. The lab's program, supported by the American Gastroenterological Association, PSC Partners Seeking a Cure, the Department of Defense, and the NIH, runs from defined bacterial strains and metabolites at the bench to the PSC and PBC clinical trials Awoniyi leads in clinic. He chairs the Education Committee of the Northeast Ohio Liver Alliance and serves on the AGA Hepatobiliary Council and its Center for Gut Microbiome Research & Education.
Awoniyi's work is unfinished by design. A quarter-century after Payton's death, PSC still has no medical therapy that changes its course, and closing that gap is exactly why this lab exists. Trainees here work on questions that reach from a single protective microbe to a patient in clinic, in the conviction that the two belong in the same sentence.
Education & Professional Highlights
Appointed
2022
Fellowship - University of North Carolina
Transplant Hepatology
Chapel Hill, NC USA
2022
Fellowship - University of North Carolina
Gastroenterology/Hepatology
Chapel Hill, NC USA
2021
Residency - The University of Michigan Health System
Internal Medicine
Ann Arbor, MI USA
2016
Internship - The University of Michigan Health System
Internal Medicine
Ann Arbor, MI USA
2014
Medical Education - University of Washington School of Med.
Seattle, WA USA
2013
Graduate School - University of Washington School of Med.
Molecular and Cellular Biology
Seattle, WA USA
2012
Undergraduate - Beloit College
Biochemistry
Beloit, WI USA
2003
Research
Overview
The gut–liver axis in cholestatic disease
The Awoniyi Laboratory studies how the gut microbiome drives, and can restrain, primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and PSC-associated inflammatory bowel disease. We combine gnotobiotic and germ-free mouse models, defined bacterial communities, and microbial and metabolomic profiling to connect specific gut microbes and their metabolites to hepatobiliary and intestinal inflammation and fibrosis. Our aim is to convert these mechanisms into microbe- and metabolite-based diagnostics and therapies for diseases that today have few.
Research Themes
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Protective and pathogenic resident microbes: We define the gut bacteria that modify cholestatic liver disease; short-chain fatty acid–producing commensals that restrain injury on one hand and translocating pathobionts that worsen it on the other; and the bile-acid and immune pathways through which they act.
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Microbial and metabolite therapeutics: We test defined strains and microbial metabolites (such as short-chain fatty acids) as interventions to slow biliary inflammation and fibrosis in preclinical PSC models.
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PSC–IBD and colorectal cancer risk: We built one of the first chronic, spontaneous PSC-IBD models (the Mdr2/Il10 double-knockout) that reproduces colitis, a distinctive bile acid profile, and colitis-associated colorectal cancer alongside biliary disease. We use germ-free and patient-derived microbiota to further dissect.
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Bench-to-bedside translation: We pair mechanistic models with large, real-world clinical datasets and clinical trials to test whether microbiome- and metabolite-based strategies change outcomes in PSC and PBC.
Additional Coverage
- Exploring the Functional Roles of Resident Bacteria in Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis — Cleveland Clinic Consult QD (2025). https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/exploring-the-functional-roles-of-resident-bacteria-in-primary-sclerosis-cholangitis
Our Team
Selected Publications
View publications for Olumuyiwa Awoniyi, MD, PhD
(Disclaimer: This search is powered by PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed is a third-party website with no affiliation with Cleveland Clinic.)
- Dysbiotic microbiota trigger colitis-associated colorectal cancer and imprint a distinctive bile acid profile in a PSC-IBD model. Awoniyi M, El Hag M, Hernandez J, Yang Q, Evans N, Nemet I, Ngo B, Coskuner D, Zhou J, Farmer M, Su L, Zhou H, Roach J, Stappenbeck T, Sartor RB. Gut. 2026. doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2025-336675. Pairs a large human surveillance-colonoscopy cohort (251 PSC-UC vs 8,839 UC-only patients) with the Mdr2/Il10 double-knockout mouse model to show that transferable, dysbiotic microbiota drive colitis-associated colorectal cancer and a distinctive, secondary–bile-acid-depleted profile; germ-free and microbial-transfer experiments separate the microbiome's colitis-promoting effects from its hepatoprotective ones.
- Protective and aggressive bacterial subsets and metabolites modify hepatobiliary inflammation and fibrosis in a murine model of PSC. Awoniyi M, Wang J, Ngo B, Meadows V, Tam J, Viswanathan A, Lai Y, Montgomery SA, Farmer M, Kummen M, Thingholm L, Schramm C, Bang C, Franke A, Lu K, Zhou H, Bajaj JS, Hylemon PB, Ting JPY, Popov YV, Hov JR, Francis HL, Sartor RB. Gut. 2023 Apr;72(4):671–685. doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2021-326500.
- Giardia antagonizes beneficial functions of indigenous and therapeutic intestinal bacteria during protein deficiency. Bhatt AP, Arnold JW, Awoniyi M, et al. Gut Microbes. 2024;16:2421623.
- Protective and aggressive bacterial subsets and metabolites modify hepatobiliary inflammation and fibrosis in a murine model of PSC. Awoniyi M, Wang J, Ngo B, Meadows V, Tam J, Viswanathan A, Lai Y, Montgomery SA, Farmer M, Kummen M, Thingholm L, Schramm C, Bang C, Franke A, Lu K, Zhou H, Bajaj JS, Hylemon PB, Ting JPY, Popov YV, Hov JR, Francis HL, Sartor RB. Gut. 2023 Apr;72(4):671–685. doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2021-326500. PMCID: PMC9751228.
- Giardia hinders growth by disrupting nutrient metabolism independent of inflammatory enteropathy. Giallourou N, Arnold J, McQuade ETR, Awoniyi M, et al. Nat Commun. 2023 May 18;14(1):2840. PMCID: PMC10195804.
- Rationally designed bacterial consortia to treat chronic immune-mediated colitis and restore intestinal homeostasis. Van der Lelie D, Oka A, Taghavi S, Umeno J, Fan TJ, Merrell KE, Watson SD, Ouellette L, Liu B, Awoniyi M, Lai Y, Chi L, Lu K, Henry CS, Sartor RB. Nat Commun. 2021 May 28;12(1):3105. PMCID: PMC8163890.
- Homeostatic regulation of Salmonella-induced mucosal inflammation and injury by IL-23. Awoniyi M, Miller SI, Wilson CB, Hajjar AM, Smith KD. PLoS One. 2012;7(5):e37311. PMCID: PMC3356277.