KGHCRIKOREA GINSENG & HERB CLINICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE
KO|EN|JA

Research Team

Principal investigator and delivery structure

Design and analysis are carried out by the principal investigator directly; delivery teams and partner organisations are assembled on a per-project basis.

Principal investigator

Kwang Jo Lee, Ph.D.

Position
Director, KGHCRI / Principal Investigator
Degree
Ph.D. in Food and Nutrition — Seoul National University
Experience
30 years (plant-based nutrition, physiology of fasting, integration of traditional East Asian practice with modern science)
Research themes
Human metabolic response to ginseng and fermented red ginseng; hormonal and autonomic mediating pathways; lipid and glucose markers; mood and cognitive measures
SCIE papers
Three as first author (references below)
Books
Five or more in plant-based nutrition and ketogenic diet
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9739-3825

First-author SCIE papers

  1. SCIELee, K. J., & Ji, G. E. (2014). Free-fatty-acid-regulating effects of fermented red ginseng are mediated by hormones and by the autonomic nervous system. Journal of Ginseng Research, 38(2), 97-105.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jgr.2013.12.003
  2. SCIELee, K. J., & Ji, G. E. (2014). The effect of fermented red ginseng on depression is mediated by lipids. Nutritional Neuroscience, 17(1), 7-15.
    https://doi.org/10.1179/1476830513Y.0000000059
  3. SCIELee, K. J., Lee, S. Y., & Ji, G. E. (2013). Diabetes-ameliorating effects of fermented red ginseng and causal effects on hormonal interactions: Testing the hypothesis by multiple group path analysis. Journal of Medicinal Food, 16(5), 383-395.
    https://doi.org/10.1089/jmf.2012.2583

All three are human studies of fermented red ginseng. Rather than reporting only the change in the outcome variable, each measured hormonal and autonomic markers in parallel and tested an explicit pathway hypothesis. The same approach is applied to the human trials the institute designs today.

Delivery structure

  1. Principal investigator

    Writes the protocol and the statistical analysis plan, and carries out the final analysis and manuscript preparation.

  2. Study site

    Where recruitment and subject visits are required, work is carried out with an IRB-approved study site.

  3. Analytical partners

    Cell and animal work, HPLC quantification of marker compounds and clinical sample analysis are contracted to appropriately equipped organisations.

  4. Statistics and documentation

    Data cleaning, statistical analysis, tables and figures, reports and manuscripts are produced by the institute.

Team composition varies with the scale and design of the project. The delivery structure and division of responsibilities are set out in writing before contract.

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