Fact-based personalised nutrition for the young

Project Information

NUTRISHIELD

Grant agreement ID: 818110

DOI

10.3030/818110

Project closed

EC signature date 10 October 2018

Start date 1 November 2018

End date 30 April 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Total cost

€ 8 732 209,59

EU contribution

€ 7 197 096,25

Coordinated by

ALPES LASERS SA
Switzerland

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - NUTRISHIELD (Fact-based personalised nutrition for the young)

Reporting period: 2021-11-01 to 2023-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The goal of is to develop and demonstrate a platform for guiding EU citizens towards personalized nutritional plans, to contribute to reducing diet-related health disorders, as well as to study the relationship between diet and health conditions in children. The innovative framework support personalized nutrition based on a comprehensive set of metabolic, environmental and other factors validated through three clinical studies: one for personalized nutrition of young individuals with obesity or/and type 2 diabetes; the second focused on prematurely born infants and their lactating mothers, aiming at augmenting the nutritional value of human milk; the third exploring the relationship between nutrition and cognitive development in young individuals. NUTRISHIELD succeeded at creating a personalised platform for the young. The platform consists of novel methods & techniques, which analyse several biomarkers related to nutrition and health disorders. Based on findings, the platform then uses ICT, by expanding existing nutrition assistive mobile apps to provide feedback and steering people towards a better nutrition.

During the final period, the NUTRISHIELD platform was reshaped aiming to enhance user-friendliness to engage the end user, the children and their parents, in a pleasant and non-intrusive way. Both the final versions of the NUTRISHIELD app and dashboard were delivered. These dedicated to personalized nutrition tools have been designed in collaboration via the efficient collaboration between software developers, bioinformatics and AI experts, nutritionists, and medical doctors. The app offers an intuitive and efficient manner for patients to receive personalized nutrition advice, guidance on how to follow these advice (some of which are derived via complex machine learning algorithms), monitor the adherence to plan, as well as provide the health professional useful information on the nutritional habits of the patients, as well as the degree of adhesion to the personalized nutrition plan.

Moreover, a set of analysers, tools and techniques were demonstrated: the NUTRISHIELD urine analyser, the demonstration of an advanced protocol for the study of the human milk composition which avoids the use of expensive techniques, as well as the identify correlations between specific biomarkers and nutrition (e.g. Microtyping, metabolome, etc), while also deriving correlation between different biomarkers. Several demonstration activities took place to validate the NUTRISHIELD approach in clinical controlled settings, this includes the study of real samples from patients (human milk, faeces, urine, blood, as well data from questionaries) , the processing of data using advanced algorithms as well the use of the NUTRISHIELD analysers by hospital personnel.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In total, NUTRISHIELD managed to:

- Establish of a fact-based connection between dietary choices and health amelioration, via the development of new methodologies and the identification of new correlations between biomarkers and personalized nutrition, the development of new tools (analysers and other techniques) that enable the efficient measurement of important biomarkers, and the development of the NUTRISHIELD platform that enables the efficient use of the NUTRISHIELD algorithms by both the patients and the health professionals.

- Demonstrate a platform for both the patients and the health professionals (medical doctors, nutritionists) that aims to provide an easy-to-use guidance for a fact-based personalized nutrition scheme, designed in collaboration via the efficient collaboration between software developers, bioinformatics and AI experts, nutritionists, and medical doctors. The app offers an intuitive and efficient manner for patients to receive personalized nutrition advice, guidance on how to follow these advice, monitor the adherence to plan, as well as provide the health professional information on the nutritional habits of the patients.

- Develop a urine analyser, a human milk analyser, and a breath analyser, aiming at bringing analytical capabilities to many practicing doctors, thus making personalised nutrition more widely adopted. The means to validate objective was the successful delivery of urine analyser, human milk analyser, and breath analyser.

- Validate advanced protocols for microbiome analysis and metabolomic analysis to identify dietary components and other lifestyle features that can be associated to altered microbiota composition. Metabolomic and metagenomic analysis allowed us to link the presence and relative abundance of microbial species/microbial metabolites to intestinal inflammation, gut barrier damage and pathology (diabetes/obesity) in correlation with specific foods or nutrients.

- Study III investigated the potential of using breath volatile as biomarkers to evaluate the diet quality and extrapolate on its impact on the cognitive function in children. NUTRISHIELD collaborated with another research project studying whether nutritional status can affect the outcome of spatial cognition training in the brain. NUTRISHIELD dedicated breath analyser measures specific gases in the exhaled breath. Breath analysis can unveil the interrelationship between the diet and gut microbiota and its impact on children’s health.

In total, NUTRISHIELD generated both new knowledge in the field of personalized nutrition and its connection to health status of children, as well as new tools and protocols that show a potential for market penetration is this rapidly expanding field. The first is reflected in the total of 19 publications in peer reviewed scientific journals achieved by the consortium, while the second include: the NUTRISHIELD app, dashboard, tailored-lasers, urine analyser, breath analyser, human milk analyser, metabolomic and microbiome analysis protocols and advanced algorithms developed.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Nutrishield develops a set of innovative tools and methodologies, to be combined in a holistic manner to reach the project objectives. The progress beyond the state of the art includes:
- The development of tailor-designed mid-IR emitting laser sources to be integrated in novel analysers, namely a urine analyser, a human milk analyser, a breath analyser
- The development of the aforementioned analysers that surpass the performance of existing equipment in terms of measurement speed, cost of measurements, minimum amount of samples to be measured
- The combination of the new laser-based urine analysis with low cost printed sensors for a complete and comprehensive analysis
- The design and implementation of an optimized analytical pipeline for the efficient monitoring of biomarkers
- The development of the NUTRISHIELD personalised nutrition algorithm
- The development of the NUTRISHIELD App & Platform


NUTRISHIELD sets the ground for personalised diet to become a reality in EU in the coming years. Many similar efforts have failed in the past, because they lacked a holistic methodology. NUTRISHIELD focuses on recommending young individuals, children & toddlers, on their food choices, based on scientifically sound key metrics and specific metabolites/biomarkers monitoring (through urine analysis, breath analysis, breast milk analysis, microtyping, genotype, phenotype, etc). By getting the younger generation motivated, NUTRISHIELD is capitalizing on the future of personalised nutrition, based on scientific facts.