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News Release
Thursday, January 20, 2022
NIH awards $170 million for precision nutrition study
The Nutrition for Precision Health study leverages NIH’s All of Us Research Program’s large, diverse data platform.
The goal of the NIH Common Fund’s Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program (NHP), is to develop algorithms that predict individual responses to food and dietary patterns. The NPH program will build on recent advances in biomedical science including artificial intelligence (AI), microbiome research, as well as the infrastructure and large, diverse participant group of the All of Us Research Program. These advances provide unprecedented opportunities to generate new data to provide insight into personalized nutrition also referred to as precision nutrition.
The National Institutes of Health is awarding $170 million over five years, pending the availability of funds, to clinics and centers across the country for a new study that will develop algorithms to predict individual responses to food and dietary routines. The Nutrition for Precision Health powered by the All of Us Research Program (NPH) will recruit a diverse pool of 10,000 participants who are part of the NIH’s All of Us Research Program to inform more personalized nutrition recommendations.
The initiative includes 11 new awards and provides additional funds to three existing NIH All of Us Research Program awards. NPH is a NIH-wide effort managed by the NIH Common Fund and the first independent study to invite diverse participants from the All of Us program.
“We know that nutrition, just like medicine, isn’t one-size-fits-all,” said Holly Nicastro, Ph.D., M.P.H., a coordinator of NPH. “NPH will take into account an individual’s genetics, gut microbes, and other lifestyle, biological, environmental, or social factors to help each individual develop eating recommendations that improve overall health.”
A major challenge in precision nutrition is the inability to combine the many factors that affect how individuals respond to diet into a personalized nutrition regimen. These potential factors include the microbiome–the community of microbes that live in our gut, metabolism, nutritional status, genetics, and the environment. The way these factors interact to affect health are still poorly understood.
To address these gaps, NPH will collect new data on multiple potential predictive factors and combine it with existing data in the All of Us database to develop a more complete picture of how individuals respond to different foods or dietary routines. By developing this large study of precision nutrition research, NPH will complement ongoing nutrition research efforts across NIH and implement components of the 2020-2030 Strategic Plan for NIH Nutrition Research. The NPH data will be integrated into the All of Us Researcher Workbench and made widely available to allow researchers to make discoveries that could improve health and prevent or treat diseases and conditions affected by nutrition.
“The All of Us Research Program was designed to support a wide range of studies by providing the infrastructure for a large, diverse data set that has been previously unavailable,” said Josh Denny, M.D., CEO of All of Us. “We’re delighted that All of Us has a role in advancing in-depth nutrition research and furthering precision nutrition by serving as a platform for this unique initiative.”
All of Us will contribute existing data from participants who agree to participate in the NPH study, including genomics, linked electronic health records, and survey data, such as information on daily life experiences, family health, and more. These data linkages will power NPH to be one of the largest, most diverse precision nutrition studies to date.
The NPH program includes multiple institutes and centers within NIH, including the NIH Common Fund; All of Us Research Program; Office of Nutrition Research; National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the National Cancer Institute; and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
The 14 awards will establish the NPH consortium including six clinical centers, a dietary assessment center, a metabolomics and clinical assays center, a microbiome and metagenomics center, a multimodal data modeling and bioinformatics center, a research coordinating center, and additional support to existing All of Us infrastructure.
Watch an overview video of the Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program® to learn more about this initiative.
About the NIH Common Fund: The NIH Common Fund encourages collaboration and supports a series of exceptionally high-impact, trans-NIH programs. Common Fund programs are managed by the Office of Strategic Coordination in the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives within the NIH Office of the Director in partnership with the NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices. More information is available at the Common Fund website: https://commonfund.nih.gov.
About the All of Us Research Program: The mission of the All of Us Research Program is to accelerate health research and medical breakthroughs, enabling individualized prevention, treatment, and care for all of us. The program will partner with one million or more people across the United States to build the most diverse biomedical data resource of its kind, to help researchers gain better insights into the biological, environmental, and behavioral factors that influence health. For more information, visit www.ResearchAllofUs.org, www.joinallofus.org, and https://www.allofus.nih.gov/.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
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