Type 2 diabetes (T2D), marked by insulin resistance or low insulin, causes elevated blood glucose. Intestinal dysbiosis contributes to T2D progression and is associated with poor nutrition.

The EIC-funded DiBaN project combats dysbiosis and T2D using novel nutrients from ‘metabolically healthy’ insects to support microbiome-host metabolic balance.

It develops ex vivo platforms simulating dysbiosis and insulin resistance, overcoming nutrient testing limits. An AI-based tool will predict individual responses to nutritional interventions based on project data.

The FIBRE-MATCH project aims to match dietary fibre types to gut microbiome subtypes to minimise gastrointestinal symptoms caused by metabolism of fibres.
It identifies major fibre-metabolising microbiome types in Europeans and their metabolic outputs from common dietary fibres and develops fermented microbiome-tailored fibre-rich foods.
The project develops a database on the contents of different fibres in foods and evaluates the impact of microbiota-matched dietary fibre on non-communicable disease risk markers and habitual fibre intake.

The Bugs4Urate project project explores how diet, glycans, and gut microbiota affect urate metabolism to create safer, more effective hyperuricemia treatments and prevent gout.

Gout is a painful disease caused by high blood urate, often linked to diet and metabolic imbalance. Current treatments have limitations.

Bugs4Urate introduces a precision nutrition approach using probiotics, dietary fibres, and patient stratification to reduce serum urate levels and address gout’s root causes with targeted microbiome-based strategies.

GLUCOTYPES is redefining how we approach type 2 diabetes prevention. By combining advanced glucose monitoring, molecular biology, and machine learning, this EIC-funded project aims to identify unique blood sugar patterns –defined as “glucotypes”–  that can provide early insights into disease development and lay the foundation for personalized nutrition strategies.

Led by a multidisciplinary team from across Europe, the project combines cutting-edge science with a shared commitment to improving health.

The InteractHoMiG project, a collaboration between Utrecht University and Inbiose, aims to discover novel glycosyltransferase enzymes, enable the production of previously inaccessible human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), and investigate their roles in gut health.

By leveraging ex vivo simulated gut environments, advanced in vitro models, cutting-edge omics technologies, and AI-driven analytics, we seek to unravel the structure-function relationships of HMOs and their direct and indirect effects on host-microbe interactions.

The project will deliver both a wealth of research data and an expanded range of HMOs as research tools and potential therapeutics and/or preventives in human non-communicable diseases and food-related health conditions.

With deep expertise in glycoengineering, microbiology, and bioinformatics, InteractHoMiG will advance HMO research and lay the groundwork for future innovation and commercialization efforts across Europe and beyond.

Mentoring for Health is a Horizon Europe Pathfinder project that aims to develop personalised nutrition strategies to support lung cancer patients. By combining advanced technologies like lung-on-a-chip models, molecular profiling, and AI, the project seeks to understand how specific nutrients influence cancer progression and treatment outcomes.

By integrating diverse data sets from genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, the project aims to provide personalised dietary recommendations that address the unique nutritional needs of each patient. The project’s innovations in both technology and methodology promise to revolutionise the approach to cancer care, potentially reducing the economic burden of the disease while improving the quality of life and survival rates of patients.

The project’s interdisciplinary nature, combined with its focus on digital health and precision nutrition, positions it to make substantial contributions to the broader field of non-communicable diseases, offering hope for more effective and personalised treatments in the future.

Development of nutritional vesicles for precision diagnostics and therapeutics for metabolic diseases.

The NutriEV investigates the complex interactions between nutritional extracellular vesicles, gut cells, the microbiome, and their vesicles, aiming to understand their role in gut health, obesity, and metabolic regulation through in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies. Extracellular vesicles have been identified in sweat, exhibiting unique molecular signatures that enable non-invasive biomonitoring technologies to assess nutritional impacts.
By leveraging nutriEV molecular data, the project intends to create algorithms that enhance dietary guidelines and test a novel hypothesis regarding the impact of diet on health, particularly through plant-derived EVs.