Mustafa Ozcam, PhD

PhD. University of Wisconsin Madison, 2019

Postdoctoral Training, UCSF, 2025

Microbiome, Early-Life Diet, Protein Metabolism, Food Allergy, Asthma, System Biology.

• Özçam M, Lin DL, Gupta CL, Li A, Wheatley LM, Baloh CH, Sanda S, Jones SM, Lynch SV. Enhanced Gut Microbiome Capacity for Amino Acid Metabolism is Associated with Peanut Oral Immunotherapy Failure. Nature Communications. 2025
• in DL, Magnaye KM, Porsche CE, Levan SR, Rackaityte E, Özçam M, Lynch SV. 12,13-diHOME Promotes Inflammatory Macrophages and Epigenetically Modifies Their Capacity to Respond to Microbes and Allergens. Journal of Immunology Research. 2024. 
• Özçam M. & Lynch SV. The gut-airway microbiome axis in health and respiratory diseases. Nature Reviews Microbiology. 2024.
• McCauley KE, Durack J, Lynch KV, Fadrosh DW, Fujimura KE, Vundla F, Özçam M, LeBeau P, Caltroni A, Burns P, Tran HT, Bacharier LB, Kattan M, O'Connor GT, Wood RA, Togias A, Boushey HA, Jackson DJ, Gern JE, Lynch SV. Early-life nasal microbiota dynamics relate to longitudinal respiratory phenotypes in urban children.Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 2024.
• Hertz S, Anderson JM, Nielsen HL, Schachtschneider C, McCauley KE, Özçam M, Larsen L, Lynch SV, Nielsen H. Fecal microbiota is associated with extraintestinal manifestations in inflammatory bowel disease. Annals of Medicine. 2024.
• Özçam M, Oh JH, Tocmo R, Acharya D, Zhang S, Astmann TJ, Heggen M, Ruiz-Ramírez S, Li F, Cheng CC, Vivas E, Rey FE, Claesen J, Bugni TS, Walter J, van Pijkeren JP. A secondary metabolite drives intraspecies antagonism in a gut symbiont that is inhibited by cell-wall acetylation. Cell Host & Microbe. 2022.
• Wu KC, Cao S, Weaver CM, King NJ, Patel S, Kingman H, Sellmeyer DE, McCauley K, Li D, Lynch SV, Kim TY, Black DM, Shafer MM, Özçam M, Lin DL, Rogers SJ, Stewart L, Carter JT, Posselt AM, Schafer AL. Prebiotic to Improve Calcium Absorption in Postmenopausal Women After Gastric Bypass: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 2022. 
• Özçam M, Tocmo R, Oh JH, Afrazi A, Mezrich JD, Roos S, Claesen J, van Pijkeren JP. Gut Symbionts Lactobacillus reuteri R2lc and 2010 Encode a Polyketide Synthase Cluster That Activates the Mammalian Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 2019. 
• Oh JH, Lin XB, Zhang S, Tollenaar SL, Özçam M, Dunphy C, Walter J, van Pijkeren JP. Prophages in Lactobacillus reuteri Are Associated with Fitness Trade-Offs but Can Increase Competitiveness in the Gut Ecosystem. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 2019. 
• Zhang S, Oh JH, Alexander LM, Özçam M, van Pijkeren JP. d-Alanyl-d-Alanine Ligase as a Broad-Host-Range Counterselection Marker in Vancomycin-Resistant Lactic Acid Bacteria. Journal of Bacteriology. 2018. 
• Kristensen KH, Wiese M, Rytter MJ, Özçam M, Hansen LH, Namusoke H, Friis H, Nielsen DS. Gut Microbiota in Children Hospitalized with Oedematous and Non-Oedematous Severe Acute Malnutrition in Uganda. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. 2016.

Our research addresses a frontier in allergy biology: how microbial protein metabolism, influenced by early-life diet such as breastfeeding or formula feeding, alters the gut microbiome’s functional capacity and contributes to immune tolerance or allergy risk. By integrating multi-omics microbiome analyses, immunology, gnotobiotic models, and advanced computational approaches, we aim to uncover microbial and metabolic pathways that predict allergy development and can be leveraged for prevention or treatment.

Importantly, our projects are closely tied to ongoing NIH-funded clinical trials and collaborative networks, including the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) and Systems Biology of Early Atopy (SunBEAm) birth cohort, providing opportunities to connect mechanistic lab research with clincial human studies. For trainees and researchers, our lab offers hands-on experience designing in vitro and in vivo experiments, analyzing multi-omics datasets, and contributing to translational research with real-world clinical impact. We are committed to fostering a collaborative, inclusive, and intellectually stimulating environment where curiosity drives discovery.

Lab Website 

ORCID

Google Scholar