Geert F. Houben
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RESEARCH AREA
UMC Utrecht and TNO collaborate in research on food-borne factors in allergic and inflammatory diseases. My role is developing and applying methods to identify food-borne factors that influence the inflammatory state of our body. A good inflammatory balance is crucial for our health. On the one hand we need inflammatory processes, on the other hand they have to be controlled and suppressed. The inflammatory balances are determined by an interplay between intrinsic properties (such as our genome) and extrinsic factors. The most abundant exposure to extrinsic factors is through our food, but we actually know very little about which and how food-borne factors affect our immune system. The role of the intestinal microbiome and particularly its metabolites are of course very important, but on its turn, the intestinal microbial metabolome is also strongly influenced by what we eat. And also in this respect, we know very little about which factors do this in which way and how that influences immune functions. Together with my colleagues, I aim to elucidate how we can use diet as an intervention or to support interventions in immune health, to develop better diagnosis, patient stratification, and population and personalized management, therapy and prevention of inflammatory diseases.
RECENT RESULTS
Food allergy is a major cause of loss of health, loss of quality of life, and losses due to food recalls. This is mainly due to difficulties and hurdles that food business operators experience in providing meaningful information on allergen presence in food products and an inability of authorities to decide on and implement regulatory solutions. During past few years, we have become world leading with our vision and development of an approach for better protection of food allergy patients from unintended allergen presence in food. This is based on an innovative idea for combining entirely different disciplines (medical, toxicological, nutrition, dietetics, analytical) and stakeholders. Based on our work, a guideline for precautionary allergen labeling was developed and implemented in Australia and New Zealand. This guideline is now being followed internationally by more and more companies and governments, and in Europe, 8 countries are now using such an approach.
PHD SUPERVISION
- Smits (TNO Shared Research Program Food Allergy; Finnish Strategic Research Council)
- Versluis (NVWA; UMCU in kind funding)
- Meima (TNO VP Biomedical Health)
TOP PUBLICATIONS
- Blom, W.M., Michelsen-Huisman, A.D., van Os-Medendorp, H., van Duijn, G., de Zeeuw-Brouwer, M.-L., Versluis, A., Castenmiller, J.J.M., Noteborn, H.P.J.M., Kruizinga, A.G., Knulst, A.C., Houben, G.F., Accidental food allergy reactions: Products and undeclared ingredients. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 142(3), pp. 865-875, 2018
- Geert Houben, Marty Blom, Paula Alvito, Ricardo Assunção, René Crevel, Christiane Kruse Fæste, Thuy-My Le, Charlotte Bernhard Madsen, Ben Remington, Thomas Stroheker, Emilia Vassilopoulou, Kitty Verhoeckx, Jana Žiarovská, Anne Constable, Defining the targets for the assessment of IgE-mediated allergenicity of new or modified food proteins, Food and Chemical Toxicology, 127, pp. 61-69, 2019
- Joost Westerhout, Joseph L. Baumert, W. Marty Blom, Katrina J. Allen, Barbara Ballmer-Weber, René W.R. Crevel, Anthony E.J. Dubois, Montserrat Fernández-Rivas, Matthew J. Greenhawt, Jonathan O’B Hourihane, Jennifer J. Koplin, Astrid G. Kruizinga, Thuy-My Le, Hugh A. Sampson, Wayne G. Shreffler, Paul J. Turner, Steve L. Taylor, Geert F. Houben, Benjamin C. Remington. Deriving individual threshold doses from clinical food challenge data for population risk assessment of food allergens. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 144(5), pp. 1290-1309, 2019