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Biography |
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Current position: Full Professor at the Molecular Nutrition Unit, Technische Universität München (since 1999)
Education
Habilitation and venia legendi for Physiology and Biochemistry of Human Nutrition (Univ. Giessen)Ph.D. Biochemistry of Nutrition, ‘summa cum laude’ Univ. Giessen
Diploma in Nutritional Sciences, ‘summa cum laude’ Univ. Giessen
Nutritional Sciences, Univ. Giessen
Former positions held
Full Professor for Nutritional Biochemistry, Univ. Giessen
Research associate, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Research Associate and Assistant Professor,Univ. Giessen
Resident/Fellow, Institute of Physiology, Univ. of Glasgow, UK Selected memberships
Member of the American Physiological Society
Member of the American Institute of Nutrition
Member of the German Society of Biological Chemistry & Molecular Biology
Member of the Board of the Germany Society of Nutrition
Member of the Senate commission (SKLM) on food safety and health of the DFG
Elected member of the Akademie Leopoldina (Academy of Science), Germany
Elected member (collegiate) of the DFG Review Board Medicine-Section 4 for Nutritional Sciences
Member of the editorial board of European Journal of Nutrition and Pfluegers Archiv
Selceted honors and awards
Research fellowship of the Federation of the European Biochemical Societies
Research-Fellowship of the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany Award of the "Herbert Quandt-Stiftung" for Promotion of Nutritional Science
Franz-Vogt-Award of the Justus-Liebig-Univerity Giessen Fellowship-Award of the "American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases"
Henneberg-Lehmann-Award of the Georg-August-Universität Goettingen, Germany
Pro Meritis Scientiae et Litterarum Award of the of the Bavarian Ministry for Science, Research and Arts
Teaching award of the Bavarian Ministry for Science, Research and Arts
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Abstract |
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Life Sciences applications in research on food, diet and health |
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With the toolbox of the modern life sciences, research into the effects of food and diet has become a new adventure in understanding the processes that make up mammalian metabolism in health and disease. Essentially unlimited when taken into studies in human cells in culture or in vivo studies in animal models, omics applications in human trials are limited by the availability of biosamples, usually restricted to body fluids, blood cells or biopsy material. The interrelationship between healthy life styles including diet and disease is traditionally explored by epidemiology and more recently by GWAS (genome-wide association studies) that link genetic heterogeneity to disease susceptibility and risks. So far these approaches have crossly not delivered the expected outcomes2 but new technologies such as whole genome sequencing pave the road for the GWAS II phase. Yet, since these approaches are all population based, the findings are hard to translate back onto the individual level and of course, they also deliver only risk indicators by statistical means. It remains to be seen of whether addressing a consumer as a “genotype” increases compliance for example to dietary counseling.
The science needs now become obvious. Whereas genotyping is easy to perform, highly standardized and on high throughput level, human phenotyping is the bottleneck. If we want to link genotype to phenotypic outcome, we need to provide more comprehensive measures of the individual´s phenotype, follow them over time and perform genotype-based dietary intervention studies. This is much harder to perform than genotyping and needs a highly standardized approach defined by the international science community and should for the sake of costs and feasibility be done decentralized. In addition to standard measures of the health status (body mass index, waist to hip ratio etc) this will include all omics technologies (mainly proteomics and metabolomics) but also a variety of new devices that determine vital parameters such as blood pressure, heart function etc. that can be coupled to internet platforms of e-health and e-commerce. What can be predicted for the future is that there is a wide range of web-based health services which may include dietary counseling in combination with other lifestyle (i.e. exercise) interventions as well as “personalised” food items that take individual preferences into account. Health insurances may be part of such services and measures of compliance may be used in adjusting individual health insurance plans. Such a system of course challenges some fundamental principles of liberal societies and it remains to be seen how societies scope with this. Personalization can not only be the highest level of possible services but will clearly also be the highest level of personal responsibility.
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