Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NUTRIOME (Precision nutrition and postprandial immune responses)
Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2025-09-30
A grand challenge for sustainable development in Europe is to improve public health through reducing incidence of non-communicable diseases, premature mortality and health costs. An unhealthy diet is one of the most important risk factors for the global burden of diseases. Therefore, changing the dietary habits in the population toward healthier and more sustainable alternatives is urgently needed. Precision nutrition has emerged as a paradigm with promising results that could help to improve health in the post-genome era. This paradigm has been fuelled by rapid developments of novel omics technologies and remote clinical testing equipment, which are instrumental for a success in providing data-driven solutions to guide toward healthier eating for the individual consumer as well as for improving fundamental understanding of the effects of diet on human health. This approach could, to a greater extent than existing practice, improve efficacy to dietary interventions and maximizes the human health benefits and reduces the burden of diseases and their costs.
To allow development of more effective preventive strategies via precision nutrition, the determinants driving the inter-personal differences in response to specific foods and meals need to be better understood. This implies also the underlying mechanisms causing differential responses. We eat meals several times per day and are during the day constantly in the postprandial phase. Postprandial changes in circulating metabolites play a major role on human health and the immune response. This leads to the question if one can predict the type of meal, which will be most beneficial to improve an individuals’ metabolic health. Once such knowledge emerges, tailored stratified dietary advices can be developed and evaluated.
The focus of NUTRIOME is to train 10 Research Doctoral Candidates (RDCs) in data-driven precision nutrition using two complementary training strategies to learn how to handle and combine multi-omics data, to evaluate the response to foods and diets. We will provide multi-disciplinary training, so that the RDCs: i) are able to utilize, share and disseminate the growing pool of public available multi-omics data, ii) know the regulations and routine for collaborative data sharing in a FAIR manner, and iii) are experts in analysing, integrating and, including algorithm development, iv) are able to design and conduct precision nutrition intervention studies. This will provide a new competence profile to resolve a bottleneck for development of personalised preventive solutions for improved health in Europe and beyond.
To allow development of more effective preventive strategies via precision nutrition, the determinants driving the inter-personal differences in response to specific foods and meals need to be better understood. This implies also the underlying mechanisms causing differential responses. We eat meals several times per day and are during the day constantly in the postprandial phase. Postprandial changes in circulating metabolites play a major role on human health and the immune response. This leads to the question if one can predict the type of meal, which will be most beneficial to improve an individuals’ metabolic health. Once such knowledge emerges, tailored stratified dietary advices can be developed and evaluated.
The focus of NUTRIOME is to train 10 Research Doctoral Candidates (RDCs) in data-driven precision nutrition using two complementary training strategies to learn how to handle and combine multi-omics data, to evaluate the response to foods and diets. We will provide multi-disciplinary training, so that the RDCs: i) are able to utilize, share and disseminate the growing pool of public available multi-omics data, ii) know the regulations and routine for collaborative data sharing in a FAIR manner, and iii) are experts in analysing, integrating and, including algorithm development, iv) are able to design and conduct precision nutrition intervention studies. This will provide a new competence profile to resolve a bottleneck for development of personalised preventive solutions for improved health in Europe and beyond.
The activities that have been performed in NUTRIOME have mainly covered the two approaches we have had for training. All 10 RDCs have so far been re-analyzing and integrating data from existing studies among the partners to improve their skills in utilizing available data including public multi-omics data, and to analyze, integrate and interpret complex data. The individual projects prepare them for analyzing the data from the novel NUTRIOME meal study, a data-driven precision nutrition intervention study using meal responses that is being performed at three sites in Europe, at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, Wageningen University in the Nederland’s, and the University of Oslo in Norway (NCT06842433). The four RDCs that are working at these sites (RDC1, RDC2, RDC 7 and RDC 9) have spent the majority of their time in conducting first phase of the study which is now completed, and most of the other RDCs have been part of this first phase of the study via their secondments (RDC3, RDC4, RDC5, RDC6), and RDC8 and RDC10 will be part of phase II of the study during springtime 2026 when the second and final part of the study takes place. Between first phase and second phase of the study, most of the RDCs are currently involved in the development of the algorithm that will be used to develop personalized dietary advice in phase II of the intervention. Each of the RDCs have specific projects in this meal study, and they will work with different omics data from this study as second approach in the training program. All RDCs has obtained core scientific skills from their projects, their secondments, workshops, annual meeting and conferences. In addition, soft skills such as leadership and managements has been covered in one workshop.
So far in the project, the RDCs have gained core scientific skills in how to handle multiple and different omics analyses (epigenome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and microbiome) generated from existing dietary intervention studies and cohorts. This has led to a deeper comprehensive understanding of how to handle these kinds of data and how meals, and diets affect biological pathways and dependencies within individuals as well as differences between individuals. We have so far presented XX posters at conferences in 2024-2025, and so far, XX papers are submitted, and XX are published by the RDCs. We are still conducting the novel NUTRIOME meal study, and the results from this study will potential impact how to tailor diets to the right person at the right time, and identify key predictors of response to specific nutritional patterns that can be used to determine the trajectory of health or disease. We are currently working on data-driven statistical and mathematical modelling approaches to enable progress in the field. We plan to have the study finalised in 2026 and with the experience and knowledge from this trial, all RDCs will have achieved advancement beyond current knowledge.