News Release

UC San Diego Center for Microbiome Innovation (CMI) Announces Danone Nutricia Research as new Corporate Member

San Diego, Calif., January 31, 2019 – Danone Nutricia Research and the University of California San Diego Center for Microbiome Innovation (CMI) have joined forces to advance the understanding of the connection between the diet and human gut thanks to The Human Diets & Microbiome Initiative (THDMI). The ambition of THDMI is to address 2 main goals through the American Gut Project’s expertise and infrastructure, under The Microsetta Initiative (TMI) umbrella:

1. Collect human microbiota samples across different countries for mapping the Human Microbiota with a more global population representation and to a higher sequencing resolution.
2. Improve on the collection of the participants corresponding diet habits to increase the knowledge of the microbiome’s impact on human health, with an ultimate goal to develop nutritional tailored solutions for a healthy gut.

The Center for Microbiome Innovation exists to inspire, nurture, and sustain vibrant collaborations between UC San Diego Microbiome experts and many industry partners. The CMI encompasses a large range of expertise in microbiome sampling, a broad range of technologies (metagenomics, metabolomics, metatranscriptomics) and data analysis using high-performance algorithms, machine learning, and modeling. The Microsetta Initiative is an expansion of the original American Gut Project to represent its global growth with projects such as British Gut Project and other international reach.

Danone has built its business on the strength of its scientific research with its main mission “Bringing health through food to as many people as possible”. This mission guides the research teams with expertise on a variety of subjects ranging from human microbiome & gut health to consumer sciences, sensorial analysis, and human physiology.

“We are thrilled to have Danone Nutricia Research join CMI in the expansion of microbiome science,” said CMI Faculty Director Rob Knight. “This relationship aims to build on recent evidence connecting the microbiome to people’s diet and, together with our other partners in microbiome methods and data science, will potentially help to further understand how diets and foods contribute to shape the gut microbiome across different countries.”

“We believe that understanding the links between people’s diet and their microbiome is a critical step toward personalization of diet and precision probiotics. This will open new avenues for nutrition-based public health recommendations and nutrition-based innovations” said Liliana Jimenez, Innovation, Science & Nutrition Director, Essential Dairy and Plant-based at Danone Nutricia Research.

Media Contacts

Erin Bateman
Center for Microbiome Innovation
858-408-6610
ebateman@eng.ucsd.edu