Danone awards US$50,000 in scholarships for probiotics and gut bacteria research

30 Apr 2019 --- Danone North America has awarded US$25,000 scholarships each to two graduate students from the University of California Davis and the University of Chicago, in the US, which will fund investigations into the study of probiotics and gut bacteria. The seven-year strong Danone North America Fellowship Grant was established to enable up-and-coming scientists to make significant strides in the interdisciplinary fields of biology, health sciences, nutrition and probiotics. Both selected proposals from this year’s grants intend to explore the factors that influence gut health and how the gut microbiome can be improved and sustained. 

The gut microbiota – comprised of trillions of microorganisms living in the human gastrointestinal tract – have been linked to many key determinants of health including immune, metabolic and neurobehavioral traits. While there are some aspects of the gut microbiome (the community of these microorganisms) that are inherited, several outside variables such as food and drugs appear to direct how health is affected.

Grant winner Nick Jensen, Doctoral Student in the microbiology group at the University of California Davis, will study how related types of beneficial bacteria break down different carbohydrates in the foods we consume, specifically human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). Jensen’s overarching objective is to determine how to feed the good bacteria and keep them thriving.

“This project continues more than a decade of research at UC Davis, which has established that a single genus of bacteria, Bifidobacterium, is uniquely adapted to the gut of breastfed infants. Many Bifidobacterium can help protect babies from dangerous microbes, but specific strains might be more beneficial in different contexts, so it is therefore important to understand the distinct ways that they eat HMOs,” he tells NutritionInsight.

“Through this research, I hope to understand the extent to which closely-related strains of bacteria differ in their metabolic preferences. Investigating how Bifidobacterium strains have adapted to grow on HMOs could provide a model for how other kinds of gut bacteria degrade many types of dietary carbohydrates,” he further adds.

Meanwhile, Megan Kennedy from the Medical Scientist Training Program at University of Chicago will be examining whether there is an optimum time in a person's 24-hour cycle (also referred to as “circadian rhythm”) when probiotics can be introduced to the gut microbiota and if individuals can modify their own circadian rhythms to maximize the benefit from probiotics. 

“While there is much to learn before precise engineering of the microbiome shifts from aspirational goal to clinical reality, probiotics constitute one of the most promising early avenues of applied microbiome engineering,” explains Kennedy. 

“With this grant, I will have the funding to conduct scientifically rigorous experiments that link my professional interest in clinical and translational science with my academic appreciation for the complexity of microbial ecology,” she adds.

Heightening the industry focus on gut health-promoting products
New research expanding on the study of the gut microbiome gives rise to NPD opportunities in the digestive healthcare market. Innova Market Insights data from this year shows this market segment is undergoing an NPD boom with innovation happening in a diverse range of categories. Growth is noted in both of the key digestive health pillars of fibers and prebiotics, which have seen CAGR of 14 percent from 2012-2017, with probiotics also strongly trending with growth of 20 percent over this period.

While dairy is still by far the largest category for digestive health claims, growth is very modest globally, with just 0.3 percent growth reported in terms of CAGR from 2012 to 2017. Significant growth has been reported in the space of nutrition for babies and toddlers, at 19 percent. The soft drinks space has been heavily driven by the rise of gut health-promoting products drinks such as kombucha. Sports nutrition is also strongly on the rise as the benefits of probiotics on performance begin to trend and more scientific support emerges backing their performance-boosting potential. 

By Benjamin Ferrer