VTT is launching an EU project to study dietary effects mediated by gut microbiota on lipid metabolism.
The aim of the Etherpaths project is to accelerate the development of health-promoting foods.
The project will see the development of computer-assisted models with which food companies and research institutions, for instance, can predict the effects of foods in the body.
The use of models is said to make it easier to combine data from animal studies and cell-level data in the interpretation of research data from clinical trials, thus promoting research in the health effects of foods and the development of foodstuffs.
Etherpaths focuses on the balance of lipid metabolism in the body, the effects of foods in tissues and the role of gut microbiota in these processes.
The total project budget for 2009-12 is EUR8 million (GBP7 million), of which VTT's share is EUR2.5 million.
The project involves a total of 10 European research institutions and companies, including: VTT (Finland); the University of Barcelona (Spain); the University of Gothenburg (Sweden); the University of Cambridge (UK); the Institute for Systems Biology SPb (Russia); The Federico II University of Naples (Italy); Noray Bioinformatics (Spain); Biomotif AB (Sweden); Advion Biosciences (UK); and the Nestle Research Center (Switzerland).
Etherpaths is part of the EU FP7 Cooperation Work Programme: a food, agriculture and fisheries and biotechnology project (KBBE-2007-2-2-08).
