research objectives

The objectives of the NNC are:
  • To demonstrate that nutrigenomics provides powerful tools to show how nutrients and food bioactives work.
  • To demonstrate that nutrigenomics allows more comprehensive phenotyping and the identification of early biomarkers for pre-disease states (metabolic stress).
  • To provide knowledge and tools for the efficient development of new smart foods or food patterns to keep people healthy and fit according to their individual needs ("successful aging").

    In contrast to the traditional nutritional research approach, mainly based on epidemiological studies and physiological intervention studies, the Centre aims to implement the newest technologies to develop a molecular and genetic research approach to nutritional questions. Because of the complexity of the area of interest (a multifactorial syndrome) and the complexity of food and nutrition, we develop technologies that are able to provide us with new insights into the role of food components in regulating organ function and human metabolism and how these processes maybe involved or disrupted during the development of metabolic disorders. These technologies also need to be very sensitive to be able to detect relatively small deviations from homeostasis and slight effects of dietary factors on gene regulation or metabolite levels, for instance. The newest “genomics” tools are potentially able to fulfill these technological requirements.

    The ultimate goal is to elucidate molecular pathways and pathway-nutrient interactions essential to metabolic stress, thus providing a basis for the development of evidence-based functional diets for the management and prevention of metabolic stress. In achieving this goal, “omics” technologies are exploited in human nutritional intervention studies and biological data on important mechanisms obtained in the various mouse models in the research programme will be used. Combining existing and newly developed systems biology tools, we hope to identify the relevant process and biomarker events in humans in the early stages of metabolic disorders. Furthermore, the research programme is designed to yield information on how nutrition can prevent the development of full-blown metabolic diseases like type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.