Precision Nutrition is about providing the right person with the right diet at the right time – for improved health and reduced risk of diseases. To achieve this, simple methods for analyzing how the body responds to different types of food need to be developed. Researchers in Food and Nutrition Science at Chalmers University of Technology are strengthening their position through collaboration with world-leading universities in the field, Harvard and MIT.
"We can gather an incredible amount of data from individuals, such as information about their diet, microbiome*, metabolome**, health status, and habits. The core of our research is to find signals, in the form of biomarkers, within all this data that indicate whether a person will respond positively to a specific diet or not. At the same time, we aim to develop methods for analysis through, for example, a simple blood test," says Rikard Landberg, Professor of Food and Nutrition Science at Chalmers.
Collaboration, mobility and method development
2022 food sicentists at Chalmers started the Precision Nutrition Forum together with researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Broad Institute at Harvard and Massachusettes Institute of Technology, MIT, in order to strengthen collaboration and knowledge transfer between the universities. The focus was creating a small but active platform for researchers, where mobility between universities and method development is among the main objectives.
Now, the collaboration has also received funding from the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, STINT, to facilitate the continuity of initiatives and activities. An example is the conference Precision Nutrition Forum, which was held in Gothenburg for the first time in the autumn of 2022, which is planned to return every other year. The next forum will take place on 16-17 April 2024, in Copenhagen, featuring a program with some of the world leaders in the field as invited speakers.
"Unique opportunities for data analysis"
"There is great potential in our close collaboration, both in terms of knowledge transfer and method development. However, we can also replicate research results from our respective labs. It is important to reproduce experiments in different populations to ensure the validity of a study’s results. Chalmers and Harvard have access to some of the world's largest and most comprehensive population studies, providing unique opportunities for data analysis regarding the significance of diet for health," says Rikard Landberg.
Chalmers is at the forefront in precision nutrition research in Sweden.Through the recruitment of Clemens Wittenbecher, as a part of the Data Driven Life Science Initiative the university has significantly increases the expertise in development and use of advanced data processing methods, which are crucial for future success in this research field.
Glossary
*Microbiome: Microorganisms within a specific environment, in this case, the human digestive tract.
**Metabolome: Molecules that originate from the metabolism within a biological system or from the environment, which are analyzed in, for example, blood plasma or urine.
Read more about the Precision Nutrititon Research at Chalmers
- Precision nutrition of health
- Filtered coffee helps prevent type 2 diabetes, show biomarkers in blood samples
Contact
- Full Professor, Food and Nutrition Science, Life Sciences