The food and health relationship focuses on maintenance of optimal health, both in terms of physiology and new European legislation. Yet, most accepted biomarkers quantify (intermediate) disease endpoints or damage. This has led to major problems in demonstrating health benefits and establishing health claims, and blocks competitive economic and health developments in the food sector. New 'nutrigenomics' applications as developed within the European Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO, www.nugo.org) provide new biomarker concepts and strategies to characterize and quantify physiological functions related to food and health. This paves the way for the development of a new generation of robust nutrigenomic-based biomarkers and their potentially related health claims made on foods.

develop new biomarkers

The BIOCLAIMS project will develop new biomarkers by exploiting this new concept of “health biomarkers” through quantification of the robustness of the homeostatic mechanisms involved in maintaining optimal health, based on the assumption that the ability to maintain homeostasis in a continuously challenged environment and changing physiology is key for healthy ageing. Mechanisms involved will be investigated during a series of food interventions in animal models and humans using “predisposed” conditions. Human models of presumed impaired robustness in maintaining metabolic and vascular health (caloric restriction, obesity, a pro-inflammatory genotype, and others) will be employed to study the responses of established and novel biomarkers to the challenging of homeostasis and to selected food interventions (e.g. n-3 PUFA or antioxidant vitamins). Both advanced analytical methodology including nutrigenomics tools (transcriptomics, metabolomics, fatty acid composition, adipokine profile, macromolecule damage) and “whole body” physiological assessments will be exploited to develop a series of new biomarkers.

specific objectives

BIOCLAIMS has the following specific objectives:

• Identifying and characterizing nutrigenomic-based, early, robust biomarkers predictive of a healthy metabolic phenotype during ageing and/or facing stressors to homeostasis;
• validating these novel biomarkers against traditional markers;
• testing their response to bioactive food components in animal and human models.

TNO’s activities within BIOCLAIMS are focused on the integration of information collected from different experimental models to identify and validate nutrigenomic-based biomarkers. Data integration will lead to increased power to identify biomarkers, will allow for validation of biomarkers across studies and organisms and will enhance scientific evidence for effects of intervention on identified biomarkers. The TNO project team consists of Marjan van Erk, Ben van Ommen, Jildau Bouwman, Marijana Radonjic, Thomas Kelder, Martien Caspers, and Varshna Goelela.