Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Microbial functions interfering with host physiology
Highlights
Innovation of food (bio)processing using smart and mild technologies and fermentation to improve nutritional quality while ensuring safety and environmental sustainability throughout the shelf life of foods. Nutritional quality and biodiversity are targeted through both advanced and sustainable processes (including encapsulation) to preserve and improve at-risk (micro)nutrient composition of relevant food categories and exploiting microbiological and biotechnological applications to impact on nutritional quality. Such (bio)technological approaches (e.g., fermentation, enzyme treatments, etc.) are validated by process markers also directed to ensure food production safety and quality targeting new food habits (e.g., ready to eat food and novel food consumption) and sustainability, promoting production efficiency and utilisation of alternative sources (in connection with Spoke 2 and 3).
Development and validation of sustainable models of personalised/precision nutrition based on anthropometric, demographic, nutritional status, lifestyle habits, perceptive characteristics, psychosocial, metabolic response, genetic and metagenetic characteristics, also developing predictive tools for the identification of specific phenotypes and appropriate intervention strategies. Tasks include the definition and validation of improved dietary patterns to cover individual nutritional needs through sustainable and affordable foods/preparations (in connection with Spoke 1, 5 and 7) and the development of tools for the prediction at individual level of the metabolic, psychosocial, and physiological response to food intake (in connection with Spoke 6).
Identification of nutrient and non-nutrient food components (and their metabolic products) potentially involved in the promotion of consumer health, and evaluation of their bio accessibility, bioavailability, and effect on the gut microbiota, using in silico, in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo approaches on humans/animals to confirm the actual absorption and bioactivity of non-nutrient components also considering specific dietary patterns and target groups.
Evaluation of food-human interactions following the events occurring in the gastrointestinal milieu by both in vitro and in vivo approaches and elucidation of the impact of new foods and corresponding benchmarks.
Development or improvement of at least 3 biotechnological approaches to innovate food production in terms of nutritional quality, safety, and sustainability (M30)
Identification of new process and product markers (M30)
Identification of selected biomolecules to evaluate personalised nutrition interventions (M24)
Evaluation of the bioavailability and bioactivity of at least two components of foods proven to directly impact human health (M36)
Evaluation of the impact of relevant new foods on microbial ecosystem and host response (M36)
The role of the human microbiota and microorganisms associated with food on the health of individuals is supported by an increasingly number of evidence (De Filippis et al., FEMS Microbiol Rev 2020; Sanlier et al., Crit Rev Food Sci 2019). Close correlations and specific molecular mechanisms with individual bacterial species have been highlighted, thus identifying cause and effect on the physiology, nutritional state, and health of the host (Sanders et al., Curr Opin Biotech 2018; Singh et al., Crit Rev Microbiol 2021). In addition, when beneficial microbes such as probiotics are considered, it is also known that the way they are industrially produced can significantly interfere with their probiotic properties (Duboux et al., Front Microbiol 2021). Based on the above consideration It is now therefore possible to design new food products enriched in specific beneficial microbes or new food supplements based on probiotics which are produced using innovative production process able to guarantee the enrichment and the efficacy of their probiotic traits. New food products and new food supplements will also require the identification of new criteria to assess their quality.
The operational plan will be organized as follow.
