LDRI (Louvain Drug Research Institute)-MNUT (Metabolism and Nutrition Research Group) ~ Louvain4Nutrition (L4N)

Challenges

The Louvain4Nutrition research platform combines the expertise of a growing team of UCLouvain researchers who are focusing on a crucial question: ‘What is a healthy diet?’. In response to this nutrition research, the Walloon Region decided to subsidise the FOOD4GUT project, as an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional Programme of Excellence focusing on sustainable development and obesity. The coordinator of this project is Professor Nathalie Delzenne (UCLouvain), who is also a member of the Louvain Drug Research Institute (LDRI), where she co-directs the Metabolism and Nutrition Research Group (MNUT) with Professors Patrice Cani, Amandine Everard and Laure Bindels. The FOOD4GUT project focuses on the development of personalised nutrition and the nutritional transition, with the broader objective of promoting plant-based foods that are a rich source of colonic nutrients (prebiotics). The interdisciplinary nature of this research, combining expertise in human sciences, medicine and technology, creates dynamic prospects for the nutrition industry.

UCLouvain’s contribution

The FOOD4GUT project provided tools for proposing a series of innovative dietary and societal approaches. Some of these new tools, which are pioneering in terms of how they study interactions between nutrition, the microbiome and health, are being used to develop biomarkers with rapid, non-invasive and sustainable omics technologies in the context of ongoing (inter)national projects coordinated by Nathalie Delzenne: MICROBOOST in the Foodwal portfolio (a perfect example of an agri-food project in the framework of the Walloon Recovery Plan, with funding from the SPW Economy, Employment and Research), FIBREATH (PDR, with funding from the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research), GUT2BEHAVE (a European initiative of the ERA-NET NEURON network, with funding from the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research).