BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme: Food Microbiome and Health (FMH) Partner grant

With people adopting more sustainable diets, the overall aim of the FMH ISP is to investigate how an improved understanding of food structure and composition, and its interaction with the GI microbiome, can be used to promote health and prevent disease.
Context and need for FMH ISPG research: Globally, poor diet accounts for 10 million (22%) of all adult deaths (every year with cardiovascular disease as the leading cause. The UK has both the highest obesity rates and worst healthy life expectancy in Europe, hence the urgent need to switch to a more nutritionally balanced diet. Growing environmental, ethical and health concerns are motivating transition to plant-rich diets, a trend that will increase because of global population and climate change. The changes in our dietary habits provide unique opportunities for designing novel plant-based foods that improve health. However, this dietary shift also brings challenges as plant-based diets contain processed carbohydrate-rich foods with high glycaemic/ calorie content that tend to have lower availability of key macronutrients, such as protein, micronutrients including vitamins D and B12, and minerals such as iron, zinc and iodine. Many of the nutrient challenges associated with plant-based diets are being addressed through processes such as biofortification and new technologies such as gene-editing. There is need to understand the effect of these approaches not only on food structure and composition, but also how they impact the GI microbiome and host responses.

Strategy, aims and objectives: A key, achievable strategy for addressing these challenges is to focus on the relationships between plant-based food, the GI microbiome and human health. Consequently, our overall aim is to unpick the complicated relationship between particular plant-based foods, GI microbes and health through mechanistic research into these interactions. We will then apply this knowledge to develop new food-based and microbiome-targeted intervention strategies that increase health span by building or improving resilience and resistance to age-related diseases. Our research is supported by state-of-the-art food analytics, dynamic GI-tract simulation models, organ-on-chip systems, microbiota transfer technology (MRT), metagenomic sequencing and bioinformatics, super-resolution image facilities, pre-clinical models, and access to QI-based clinical research facility (CRF) and endoscopy.

The FMH ISP is organised into four themes (Ts) comprising targeted objectives that reflect the pathway and processing of plant-based food by the body to provide health benefits:
- T1 Food structure/composition/digestion and nutrient release in the GIT;
- T2 Role of plant-based foods and macro- and micro-nutrients on the GIT microbiota structure and function;
- T3 How nutrients impact on the integrity and physiology of key organ systems e.g. the GIT itself, liver and brain;
- T4 Exploiting the knowledge gained from our mechanistic studies to evaluate new food and microbiota-based interventions that promote or improve long-life health in proof-of-concept human trials.

Potential applications and benefits: Our research outputs will have relevance for multiple stakeholders including food systems; healthcare; policy and regulation; industry; consumer and patient groups. They will also inspire and equip the next generation of researchers with valuable knowledge and transferable skills to sustain long-term progress. Our outputs will feed into evidence-based policy on transitioning to sustainable, healthy plant-rich diets, achieved via our strategic links with key policy stakeholders in health, nutrition/ food standards and biological standards, thereby, underpinning healthcare applications. This will improve human health and reduce the burden on the NHS whilst providing economic gains in the food, biopharmaceutical and healthcare sectors.

This project represents Imperial College London's (ICL) contribution to the delivery of the following Institute Strategic Programme Grant: BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme: Food Microbiome and Health BB/X011054/1. ICL will contribute complimentary expedited in two areas:

1. Computational and systems biology to develop in silico models of host-microbe and related cell-cell interactomes using data from in vitro and in vivo models (Korcsmaros Group). The computational pipelines developed will be applied in Objective 3 to help understand the relationship between plant-based foods and metabolites on the integrity and signalling capacity of the GIT. Also, in Objective 4 to aid in the development of test microbiome-based interventions for restoring and improving GIT health.

2. Human nutrition expertise/ techniques for GIT aspirate sampling and infusion (Frost Group). In the previous FIH ISP we developed novel tube intubation technics to explore the luminal environment of the GIT. We have established that plant-based food structure, specifically chickpea plant cell wall intactness, alters the rate, extent and site at which nutrients are released from food during digestion. We will know apply these techniques to understanding the impact of plant food structure on macro-/ micro-nutrient bioavailability across the GIT (Objective 1). Biochemical and microstructural analyses will determine how and where cells are broken down; to what extent this occurs via microbiome/ non-microbiome mediated mechanisms; and how legume plant cell structure affects rate, extent and site of protein and carbohydrate release (bioaccessibility) and absorption (bioavailability). We will also use this technique to development of test food designed to improve the nutritional and health benefits of plant-based diets (Objective 4). In this objective we will infuse novel ingredients developed by FMH into the intestine to understand mechanistic drivers on physiological effects.