Assessment of Benefits and Risks
Background
Many bioactive food ingredients are claimed to either reduce disease risks factors or to improve life quality by optimising and maintaining body functions. These claims have to be based on scientific substantiation. The project ‘Process for the Assessment of Scientific Support for Claims on Foods’ (PASSCLAIM) developed a generic tool to assess the scientific support for health claims for foods. It also established criteria for markers and measurement techniques to be used to substantiate a claim. Today new technologies have been developed, such as the -omics technologies, which can serve as good tools to further strengthen the evidence of efficacy of specific bioactive food ingredients, detect new markers of efficacy and/or generate reliable evidence in cases (i.e. calorie restriction) where this may be difficult for the classical biomarkers. Likewise, it is conceivable that imaging techniques derived from clinical diagnosis can provide evidence in humans, i.e. brain functions, which is very difficult to get with established biomarkers/tests.
State-of-the-art tools like genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics are under investigation mostly in academia but more and more also in industry. A good example in coordinating these activities is the ‘The European Nutrigenomics Organisation: linking genomics, nutrition and health research’ (NuGO) project. One of their goals is to implement and apply genomic technologies for the benefit of nutritional science in Europe and worldwide.
Objectives
The Emerging Technologies for Efficacy Demonstration Task Force studies imaging techniques (like computer tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography) and new technologies, such as -omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics), to explore possibilities and to use these new techniques to demonstrate the effect of biological active substances in humans for claim substantiation.
Impact
The anticipated impact of this project is to define and generate an approach to further advance our tools by employing new technologies to demonstrate the effect of bioactive naturally occurring compounds in humans. These technologies will help to identify complementary markers to the established biomarkers to be used for demonstrating nutraceutical efficacy or serve as good tools to further strengthen the evidence of efficacy of specific bioactive food ingredients, e.g. by providing mechanistic evidence for biomarkers and biological plausibility to claims applications.
In 2009, the task force organised a workshop bringing together experts from academia, industry and international institutions to promote interactive discussions and advance the knowledge of emerging technologies and their role in product development. The results of this interactive process showed that some of these new technologies, like the imaging technologies are more advanced and standardised for efficacy demonstration, while the “-omics” technologies often lack standardised analysis procedures.
In 2010, the task force initiated a review on nutrigenomics in collaboration with the Technical University Munich (DE) that was published in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research. It describes how “omics” technologies have been used in human intervention studies in the past and lists human trials which used a nutritional compound and “omics” technologies. In addition, it summarises the learning from the past and states how far we are in the field of nutrigenomics technologies.
Activity
Review of Current Knowledge in 'Nutrient-Gene Interactions'
The task force has commissioned a review on nutrigenetics, investigating the influence of certain variations in the genome on the response to nutrients. Such interplay between genes and nutrients was in the past often not taken into account when human study results were analysed. Thus, reported studies not stratifying the study population according to its genetic background should be re-evaluated retrospectively to distinguish between responders and potential non-responders to certain nutrients. As the field of nutrigenetics gets more and more attention, the task force will initiate a state-of-the-art review concerning human studies which applied nutrigenetics to examine variations in the one-carbon pathway, which is the most studied one. By doing so, the expert group will review the available evidence for the role of nutrient-gene interactions involving one-carbon metabolism in disease, identify weak points in the design and concepts of human nutritional intervention studies, and give recommendations on how to optimally design future nutrigenetics studies.
Task Force Collaborators
2012 Members
| Dr. Jonas Wittwer |
DSM |
CH |
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| Dr. Mauro Fontana |
Soremartec Italia - Ferrero Group |
IT |
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| Dr. Judith Moreines |
Pfizer Consumer Healthcare |
US |
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| Dr. Peter Weber |
DSM |
CH |
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| Ms. Jilde Garst |
ILSI Europe |
BE |
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| Ms. Toula Aslanidis |
ILSI Europe |
BE |
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Review of Current Knowledge in ‘Nutrient-Gene Interactions’
| Prof. Helen McNulty - Chair - |
University of Ulster Coleraine |
UK |
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| Birgit Hoeft |
DSM |
CH |
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| Dr. Matthew Lange |
University of California |
US |
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| Prof. Georg Lietz |
Newcastle University |
UK |
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| Dr. Anne-Marie Molloy |
Trinity College |
IE |
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| Dr. Jonas Wittwer |
DSM |
CH |
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| Ms. Jilde Garst |
ILSI Europe |
BE |
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