Project description
Maternal milk adrenomedullin as a guardian of gut health
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an umbrella term for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, conditions characterised by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Recent studies revealed a protective role of endogenous adrenomedullin (AM), a hormone found in maternal milk, in IBD onset. The EU-funded I-AM-GUT project hypothesises that maternal AM impacts the breast and gut microbiome, immune development and IBD susceptibility. The project's objective is to employ a mammary gland conditional AM knock-out to unravel AM impact on the breast microbiome, on healthy gut development in infancy as well as on the diagnosis and prevention of IBD.
Objective
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a chronic gastrointestinal inflammation that has become a global disease with a high economic burden. Adrenomedullin (AM), a hormone associated with gut microbiota and physiology, is naturally present at high concentrations in maternal milk and during lactation. Using a conditional model for AM the fellow identified a protective role of endogenous AM in IBD onset, however relatively little is known about its exact role in early-life, in colitis development or as a potential diagnostic tool for IBD. The fellow hypothesizes that maternal AM’s impact on the breast and gut microbiome may regulate gut and immune development and colitis susceptibility. By creating the first mammary gland conditional knock out for AM, she will uncover novel disease mechanisms and provide the basis for new diagnostic and prevention strategies for IBD. The final goals of this multi-disciplinary project are 1) to unravel the impact of AM on the breast microbiome, the maternal AM influence on healthy infant gut development and the prevention of colitis; 2) to reveal the impact that nutritional intervention and AM administration have on milk and gut microbiome to compensate for dysbiosis and in preventing colitis progression; 3) to evaluate the value of AM as an independent prognostic biomarker for IBD. The project has been carefully designed to match the fellow’s expertise in generating transgenic mice, AM biology and molecular techniques; the expertise of the host institution (APC Microbiome Ireland) in next generation sequencing, cell culture models (organoids), flow cytometry and human studies; and the expertise of the secondment supervisor (UCD) in in situ hybrisation and digital pathology technology. Plans to improve the fellow’s ability to disseminate research findings, gain transferable skills, and learn to manage a project are in place. Ultimately at the end of this fellowship, she will have advanced her position to become an independent researcher.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinegastroenterologyinflammatory bowel disease
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepathology
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinephysiology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
T12 YN60 Cork
Ireland