7th Annual Nutrition Omics Symposium

Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Director of Epidemiology at the MGH Cancer Center. Dr. Chan is a gastroenterologist and a leading investigator in cancer prevention, supported as an Outstanding Investigator of the National Cancer Institute, Team Leader for the Stand Up to Cancer Gastric Cancer Interception Team, and by grants from the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the National Institute of Aging. An elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, he has published over 500 papers in the field of the gut microbiome, colorectal cancer and other chronic digestive diseases in leading journals, including the NEJM, JAMA, Lancet, Science, Nature Medicine,Gastroenterology and Gut.  Dr. Chan is a section editor for Gastroenterology, and serves on the editorial board of JNCI, Cancer Prevention Research, Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention. He is the Clinical Research Councilor of the American Gastroenterological Association and Chair of the Molecular Epidemiology Group of American Association for Cancer Research.

Javier Delgado, Prof, MD is a Professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Cordoba (Spain) and Vice-Dean for Hospital Affairs. He is also Co-PI of the GC09 Group at the IMIBIC Biomedical Institute, Senior Investigator of the CIBEROBN (https://www.ciberobn.es/en/about-us), a national excellence research initiative, focused on the study of obesity and nutrition for the purpose of generating useful knowledge for clinical practice, the food industry and society as a whole. He is also Clinical Coordinator of the Cordioprev Study. He also works as medical staff at the Internal Medicine Unit at the Reina Sofia University Hospital. Dr. Delgado has directed several National Research Projects, and in 2016 he got his first European H2020 Project as Principal Investigator, about empowerment of diabetic persons through technology (POWER2DM Study). He created a biotechnological company in 2012, being CEO until its dissolution in 2015 (Padmedicine). During those years, the flagship PadMed© medical app was leader in health apps for professionals in Spanish, getting into the Top10 list in AppStore in 20 countries. Dr. Delgado  has authored more than 150 publications, has an h-index of 32. Prof Delgado main research interests are to continue to deepen the genetic and pathophysiological mechanisms that trigger chronic diseases mediated by human metabolism, and to detect and provide healthy nutritional tools. In the field of technological innovation and eHealth, continue to develop tools that can help people with chronic diseases or at risk of them, and help health professionals through eHealth tools to be more effective in the fight against these diseases. In the teaching field, he is compromised with educational innovation and he aims to develop new methods to help improve the way of teaching in the Faculty of Medicine.

Carlos Diéguez is senior researcher at University of Santiago, Spain and has a major international reputation in neuroendocrinology . Over the last few years his work is mainly focus on the study of the mechanism related to hypothalamic control of energy and metabolic homeostasis. He is also professor of Physiology at the University of Santiago de Compostela and Director of the CIBEROBN (Spanish Network for research in Obesity and Nutrition.  Center for Research in Molecular Medicine and Chronic Diseases (CIMUS). He had published more than 450 papers and has been cited more than 40,000 times. He has an extensive history of European collaboration, with funding from Frameworks, 5, 6 and 7 and H2020. Of note many of his former PH.H students and postdocs are now independent researchers in different countries. As past- President of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism he has a strong record of engagement in the public understanding of science, with particular emphasis in the field of obesity.

Institution: Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, London, UK

Dr Isabel is a Lecturer in Precision and Systems Medicine at Imperial College London and CEO and Co-founder of Melico Sciences Limited. She holds a Ph.D. with honours in Chemical Sciences and is a Research Fellow of the UK-National Institute for Health (NIHR) investigating the relationship between nutrition and health. Isabel is an expert in analytical chemistry and metabolic profiling and currently runs a research group that interfaces metabolic profiling, nutrition and exercise. She has built a bridge between analytical chemistry techniques and clinical nutrition in order to pursue her passion to adapt analytical technology to beneficially impact public health. Her research focuses on understanding and developing analytical tools that can contribute to improving nutritional management at the individual and population level.  For example, one of the tools she has developed is a urine test, which can give an instant profile of an individual’s diet and indicate how healthy it is. Recently, she developed a tool that  measures individual’s response to diet and allows dietitians to personalise the most suitable diet for each individual. Her research achievement is evidenced by over 60 peer-reviewed publications in high impact factor journals including Lancet Diabetes Endocrinology, Nature Food, Nature Communications, Science translational Medicine, Gut and Analytical Chemistry.

Xiao Gu is a PhD candidate in Nutritional Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research focuses on dietary risk factors of heart failure and measurement error correction of repeatedly measured dietary intakes. Xiao is currently working on his dissertation examining the associations between multiple dietary indexes and the risk of heart failure in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. His dissertation also aims to validate FFQ-measured foods and food groups and investigate the impact of various measurement error correction methods on dietary studies of heart failure using the Women’s Lifestyle Validation Study and Men’s Lifestyle Validation Study.

Pablo Hernández-Alonso is a Juan de la Cierva-formación post-doctoral researcher. He obtained his PhD in Nutrition and Metabolism (URV, Reus, Spain; 2016) after a MSc. in Cellular & Molecular Biology and Genetics (UV, Valencia, Spain; 2012). He has recently obtained a MSc. in Bioinformatics & Biostatistics (UOC-UB; 2019). He obtained his degree in Biotechnology 9 years ago (UPV, Valencia, Spain). He has a wide background in nuts’ research with emphasis on clinical trials. In fact, his doctoral thesis reported for the first time the beneficial effect of pistachio consumption on ameliorating insulin resistance in subjects with pre-diabetes. He is currently exploring the molecular basis and nutritional epidemiology of colorectal cancer, together with unraveling different metabolites associated with food groups and/or macronutrients and their implication on the disease. He has experience in cell biology, molecular biology (gene expression and microRNA analysis), cell culture (primary and immortalized cell lines), viral culture (replication, evolution and mutation detection), metabolomics (plasma, serum, and urine), metagenomics (DNA extraction, sequencing, and analysis), data handling & analysis (using R, Perl, Python & MATLAB) and statistics (R, SPSS & Stata).

Dr. Frank Hu is Chair of Department of Nutrition, Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He serves as Co-director of the Program in Obesity Epidemiology and Prevention at Harvard and Director of Boston Nutrition and Obesity Research Center Epidemiology and Genetics Core. His major research interests include epidemiology and prevention of cardiometabolic diseases through diet and lifestyle; gene-environment interactions and risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes; nutritional metabolomics in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He has served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Preventing the Global Epidemic of Cardiovascular Disease, the AHA/ACC Obesity Guideline Expert Panel, and the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, USDA/HHS. He has served on the editorial boards of Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, Diabetes Care, and Clinical Chemistry. Dr. Hu is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Rosa M. Lamuela-Raventós has a Ph.D. in Pharmacy.

She is the Director of the Research Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety (INSA-UB) since December 2015 and she is Full Professor at the Department of Nutrition, Food Sciences and Gastronomy from the School of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, University of Barcelona.

She has been one of the most influential scientists in the world according the Highly Cited Researchers list, published by Clarivate Analytics since 2017. She has published 332 articles and her h-index is 84.

She was been awarded with the XXV Premio Instituto Danone a la Trayectoria Científica “Dr. Carles Martí Henneberg in December 2018.

Dr. Lamuela-Raventós is the principal investigator of the research group “Natural Antioxidants: Polyphenols” and leads one of CIBEROBN’s investigation groups.

She is involved in important national and international projects related to the nutritional interest of bioactive compounds present in food and natural products.

Dr. Jun Li is currently a research scientist in Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology at HSPH. She joined HSPH in Aug 2016 as a postdoc working with Drs. Frank Hu and Liming Liang.

She holds an MD for Preventive Medicine and a PhD for Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Environmental Health, both acquired from China.

The main area of her research focuses on the identification of risk factors for prevention of T2D and CVD, with particular interest and skills on high-dimensional omics research.

Dr. Li is leading several projects identifying genomic, metabolomic, dietary, and lifestyle risk factors for T2D and CVD in several US cohorts (including the NHS/HPFS, Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, WHI, and ARIC), the PREDIMED study, and the UK Biobank. She is also adopting new methodologies to integrate multi-omics data (including genetics, epigenetics, metabolomics, and gut microbiome) for the interpretation of disease etiology and identification of mechanisms through which diet/lifestyle factors impact cardiometabolic health.

She received New England Cardiovascular-Metabolic Fellowship Awards from American Diabetes Association in 2017, a Pilot and Feasibility Award from BNORC in 2018, and a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from NIDDK in 2019.

She received multiple awards including the Barry R. and Irene Tilenius Bloom Fellowship Award from HSPH, and the Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award and the Scott Grundy Award for Excellence in Metabolism Research from AHA.

She has published >50 original papers including multiple first authored papers on high-impact journals (including Circulation Research, European Heart Journals, JACC, Diabetes Care, Gut, etc.).

Dr. Liang’s group focuses on developing the computational and statistical tools for analyses of multi-omics data to understand the biological mechanism for diseases and provide prediction model to assess future risk and individual benefit for intervention. Current active projects include (1) Polygenic risk prediction model for complex diseases and traits applicable to multiple populations, including European, African and Asian populations; (2) Estimation of shared genetic components and causal link between complex diseases and traits under different genetic architectures by incorporating data of common and rare variants from multiple populations; (3) Metabolomic network analysis for diseases and dietary exposure using targeted and untargeted metabolites from mass-spectrometry based metabolomics data; (4) DNA methylation signature for aging and risk for childhood diseases (obesity and asthma) and its interaction with intervention and environmental exposures; and (5) Multi-omics integrative model for risk prediction in longitudinal cohorts. Collaboration projects applying these methods include studies for Asthma, Allergy, Lung function, Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), Diabetes, Heart Diseases and other cardiometabolic traits with study subjects from both European, African, Hispanic and Asian populations.

Full Professor and Chair, Department of Preventive Medicine & Public Health, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

Adjunct Professor, Department of Nutrition, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, USA

Group Coordinator, CIBER-OBN, Spanish National Institute of Health (ISCIII)

Prof Martínez-González is a medical epidemiologist of chronic disease with 30 years of experience and a worldwide expert in the Mediterranean diet as a preventive approach for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and other chronic diseases.

He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the SUN project (prospective dynamic cohort study investigating Mediterranean diet and chronic disease with 23,000 participants and mean follow-up 12 years).

Prof. Martínez-González was the Coordinator of the PREDIMED Research Network funded by the Spanish NIH (2006-2013). PREDIMED conducted the largest randomized primary cardiovascular prevention trial with nutrition in Europe including 7447 participants in a Mediterranean dietary intervention.  Prof. Martínez-González also was the PI of the European Research Council Advanced Research Grant  to fund the PREDIMEDPLUS trial (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/188509_en.html), an on-going trial with 6,874 participants assessing the effects of an energy-reduced Mediterranean diet with physical activity and weight loss on cardiovascular disease.

Both the PREDIMED-1 trial (11 recruitment centres) and the PREDIMED-Plus multicentre trial (23 centres) commenced in Prof. Martínez-González’s centre (vanguard centre), which informed the design of the other centres.

He has been Co-PI of several NIH-funded grants on metabolomics, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (http://medpreventiva.es/HUqpLE).

He has been mentor for several Full Professors and Associate Professors of Epidemiology and Public Health.

He is editor of the textbooks in Biostatistics (Bioestadística amigable, Elsevier, 4th ed), Epidemiology (Epidemiología aplicada, Ariel 2nd ed) and Public Health (Conceptos de salud pública, Elsevier, 2nd ed) recommended in Medical Schools teaching in Spanish.

Institution: University of Navarra, Department of Preventative Medicine and Public Health, Navarra, Spain AND CIBEROBN, MADRID, SPAIN 

Current Position: Research Associate.

Dr. Razquin is Research Associate at the University of Navarra. Dr. Razquin received her PhD at the University of Navarra in the field of Nutrigenetics in the frame of the PREDIMED trial. She did a 4y placement as a post-doctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics, and a brief placement at the Laboratory of Solid tumors and Biomarkers both in the Center for Applied Medicine in Pamplona (Spain). After that, her research has focused on the association between lifestyle factors -mainly dietary factors- on chronic diseases, especially on cardiovascular disease, as co-investigator in the SUN Project and in the PREDIMED, PREDIMED-Plus and PREDIMAR trials. Her ongoing research includes high-throughput -OMICS techniques (metabolomics, proteomics and genomics) into intervention trials to improve the knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of cardiometabolic diseases and the potential role of diet in the prevention of them. She is the PI of a nested case-control pilot study (PREDIMAR trial) analyzing differential proteomics of recurrence vs non-recurrence of atrial fibrillation (secondary prevention).

Dr. Ruiz-Canela is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra, Spain. He has completed his Ph.D. at the University of Navarra and Master’s Degree on Public Health in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His research is currently focused on Mediterranean diet, cardiometabolic diseases and metabolomics, and culinary medicine. He is involved in different studies including the SUN cohort and the PREDIMED-Plus trial. He is coordinating research activities between the University of Navarra and the University of Harvard on different NIH projects about metabolomics, cardiovascular disease and diabetes within the PREDIMED study. He is PI in the PREDIMAR trial, about Mediterranean diet and secondary prevention of atrial fibrillation. He is also PI in two projects on culinary medicine and prevention of chronic diseases. He has been Visiting Scientist at the Department of Nutrition of the Harvard School of Public Health (2014/2016/2018).

Prof. Jordi Salas-Salvadó is Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Human Nutrition Unit of the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) and ICREA Academy Investigator by Catalan Institution of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) , holding teaching and research positions since 1988. Currently, he is the Clinical Head of the Nutrition Unit at the Internal Medicine of the University Hospital Sant Joan of Reus; Vice-Director of the Pere i Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) and Principal Investigator of the CIBER Pathophysiology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERobn) of the Carlos III Health Institute and coordinator of its Nutrition Program. He is also the Director of the Catalan Center of Nutrition of the Institute of Catalan Studies (CCNIEC), Director of the INC-World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination Chair of the Rovira I Virgili University and is a Member of the Expert Group of Public Health Agency of Catalonia of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

At the international level, he is the Chairman of the World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination at the International Nut and Dried Fruit Foundation (INC); Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Carbohydrate Quality Consortium (ICQC); Member of the Panel of Experts of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group (DSNG) of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) and Member of the Scientific Committee of the Danone International Institute.

Between 2010-2015 he was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety (AECOSAN) and President of the Federation of Scientific Societies of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics (FESNAD).

In recent years, Dr. Salas’ research has focused on clinical trials in humans that evaluate the effect of diets and dietary compounds on obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases. Since 2005, he is one of the leaders of the PREDIMED Study and is currently Chairman of the Steering Committee and coordinator of the PREDIMED-Plus study, two large clinical trials for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and mortality.

Has been declared by Clarivate Analytics as “Highly Cited Researcher” in the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 as one of the most cited researchers in the world. He has published more than 660 scientific articles, adding more than 26000 citations, with an SCI H-index 76. Editor of 14 books and co-author of more than 65 other books. Has been director of 25 doctoral theses.

His scientific and academic work has been recognized through multiple awards and recognitions among which stand out: Corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Medical Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (2014-present), Academic of the Spanish Academy of Nutrition (2009-present). Dupont Prize of Science (2014), Josep Trueta Award to his scientific career by the Academy of Medical Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (2012), Award to his scientific career by the Spanish Academy of Nutrition (2014), Awarded for the scientific and human career by the University of Navarra (2013). Recently he has been by the “Creu de Sant Cosme i Sant Damià” distinction for scientific career, awarded as the highest recognition of the Tarragona Illustrious College of Doctors (2019) and the Narcís Monturiol Award for scientific and technological merits.

Current position: Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra; co-PI of the CB12/03/30017 group at the CIBEROBN

Dr. Toledo is Associate Professor at the University of Navarra. Dr. Toledo received her MD and her PhD at the University of Navarra and her MPH at the National School of Health, both in Spain. She teaches several courses on Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health. Her research has focused on the association between lifestyle factors -mainly dietary factors- on chronic diseases, especially on cardiovascular disease. Since 2006 she has actively participated first as PhD student and then as co-investigator in the SUN Project, in the PREDIMED trial and currently also in the PREDIMED-Plus trial. She is helping in the coordination of two NIH-funded projects framed in the PREDIMED trial about metabolomics and cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes between the University of Navarra and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She has been Visiting Scientist at the Department of Nutrition of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She has an h-index of 39 and a full list of publications can be found at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1fYkDuD8TjCQn/bibliography/public/

Distinguished University Professor, Departments of Biological Sciences and Computing Science, University of Alberta

Scientific Co-director, The Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC)

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC)

Dr. David Wishart (PhD Yale, 1991) is a Distinguished University Professor in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Computing Science at the University of Alberta. He also holds adjunct appointments with the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and with the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.  He has been with the University of Alberta since 1995. Dr. Wishart’s research interests are very wide ranging, covering metabolomics, nanotechnology, molecular biology, protein chemistry, analytical chemistry, nutritional science and neuroscience. He has studied the protein and chemical causes of a number of neurological disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, autism and parkinsonism.  In addition to this work in neuroscience, Dr. Wishart has also led the “Human Metabolome Project” (HMP), a multi-university, multi-investigator project that is cataloguing all of the known metabolites in human tissues and biofluids. Using advanced methods in NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, multi-dimensional chromatography and machine learning Dr. Wishart and his colleagues have identified or found evidence for more than 115,000 metabolites in the human body. This information has been archived on a freely accessible web-resource called the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB). More recently, Dr. Wishart’s efforts have focused on studying the link between metabolites or chemicals found in foods and produced by the human gut (via digestion) to brain health and various neurological disorders.  Over the course of his career Dr. Wishart has published more than 460 research papers in high profile journals on a wide variety of subject areas. He currently co-directs The Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC), Canada’s national metabolomics laboratory.

Dr. Clemens Wittenbecher is an international research fellow at the Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, also affiliated with the German Institute of Human Nutrition and the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). His research focuses on high-dimensional molecular profiles for the prediction and precision prevention of cardiometabolic diseases. His studies integrate metabolomics and lipidomics profiles with other -omics layers, dietary information, and prospective disease incidence to elucidate the molecular links between the habitual diet and cardiometabolic risk.