Nutrition, Inflammation and Metabolism: Integrated Strategies for Prevention and Treatment of Diseases (NUIM)
Group leaders
Strategic Lines
Research lines and scientific tasks
Scope of activity relative to program resources
The six research lines described below define the full scientific scope of the program and the scientific identity that the program seeks to build.
The program's direct €150,000 three-year budget does not fund the execution of this full scope. Direct program funds support:
- the internal pilot project call (8 projects, see Section 5B)
- specialized training activities (Section 5C)
- communication and visibility actions (Section 5D)
- the annual symposium (Years 2 and 3)
- the annual retreat.
The broader task execution described under each research line is delivered through three complementary resource streams:
- Existing competitive grants and institutional resources held by participating groups, which constitute the main engine of full-scale research execution
- External competitive funding that the program is explicitly designed to catalyse, with pilot project results positioning the consortium for national and international grant applications from Year 2 onward
- In-kind contributions of time and infrastructure from participating groups that support cross-line coordination, data integration, and joint analyses.
Throughout the task descriptions that follow, we distinguish activities that the program can directly support from activities that
depend on the group-held resources and external funding.
The program's added value lies in the coordination, crossline integration, and strategic positioning of activities that would otherwise remain fragmented across groups, and in the catalytic seeding of translational collaborations that unlock external funding.
Scientific organization
The scientific work is organized into six research lines. Each line has a designated leader responsible for scientific direction, coordination of tasks, and reporting to the program coordinators.
Lines are not independent silos: several tasks require structured contributions from one line to another, and these crossline contributions are explicitly described so that roles, deliverables, and boundaries are unambiguous.
The internal call for pilot projects requires each funded project to involve at least two research lines, providing the primary structural mechanism through which crossline integration is operationalized within the program's direct budget.
To ensure that the program's scientific work responds to real-world demand and not only to internal research interests, the thematic priorities of the pilot call and the external grant strategy are informed by a structured Year 1 mapping of clinical needs in affiliated hospitals and enterprise needs in the agrifood, nutraceutical, and digital health sectors (see Section 5E, Year 1).
Line 1. Molecular characterization and systems modeling of nutrition-related biological processes
Leader: Dra. Judit Ribas
This line characterizes the mechanistic basis through which nutrients, dietary patterns, and bioactivecompounds alter biological processes at the molecular, cellular, and systems level.
It integrates multi-omicsplatforms, experimental model systems, bioinformatics, and computational modeling to identify pathways,regulatory networks, and biomarkers with translational potential.
Line 2. Nutrition and microbiome interactions
Leader: Dra. Gemma Belli
This line studies the bidirectional relationship between diet, the gut microbiome, and host physiology.
Its scope covers microbial community composition and functional capacity, host-microbe metabolic crosstalk, immune modulation at the gut barrier and beyond, and the identification of microbiome-mediated mechanisms through which dietary exposures affect health.
Line 3. Impact of nutrition on health and disease
Leader: Dra. Minerva Granado
This line evaluates the role of nutrition in the prevention, onset, progression, and management of acute and chronic diseases.
It is the primary clinical arm of the program, responsible for the design and execution of dietary intervention studies, measurement and interpretation of disease-relevant endpoints, and comparative evaluation of nutritional strategies across pathological conditions.
Line 4. Lifestyle modulators of the nutrition-inflammation-microbiome axis
Leader: Dr. Jordi de Batlle
This line investigates how lifestyle factors modify the impact of nutrition on inflammatory tone, microbiome dynamics, and metabolic health.
The conceptual contribution is that lifestyle exposures are treated not as independent research objects but as modifiers and mediators of the nutrition-disease relationship.
Line 5. Nutraceuticals and functional foods
Leader: Dr. Jose Serrano
This line covers the research pipeline from natural compound identification to preclinical and clinical proof of concept, with a strong emphasis on innovation and transfer to the agrifood and health sectors.
It bridges basic and applied research by identifying bioactive compounds, characterizing their bioavailability and safety, and evaluating efficacy.
Line 6. Implementation science of nutritional interventions
Leader: Dra. Amalia Zapata
This line applies implementation science and behavioral research methods to generate evidence on how, why, and under what conditions evidence-based nutritional interventions reach patients and populations and achieve their intended effects in real-world clinical and community settings.
Its value lies in closing the translational gap between efficacious interventions identified in controlled trials and their effective delivery in practice.
