PhD candidate Nutritional Pharmacology for Allergy Prevention (1.0 FTE)

Recently, the research project "Human milk inspired oligosaccharides for allergy prevention (HMOSforALL)" was funded by the Health Holland TKI-LSH allowance provided by the Dutch government. Within this project the Pharmacology Division of the Utrecht University and Danone / Nutricia Research B.V. will join forces to gain insight in the contribution of novel developed synthetic human milk oligosaccharides in food allergy and asthma prevention. Are you the right PhD candidate to for fill the project aims and help to contribute to identify novel ways to reduce the allergy risk in early life?

 

The aim of the project is to study the efficacy and mechanisms by which specific novel developed classes of immunomodulatory dietary non-digestible oligosaccharides can prevent the development of food allergy and asthma in pre-clinical models and to translate this to clinical application. The focus will be on milk allergy and house dust mite induced asthma.

 

Background of the project: Nowadays 10-25% of the western population is affected with allergic diseases like food allergy and/or allergic asthma. Food allergy is one of the first allergies to develop early in life and it predisposes children to develop other allergies such as house dust mite (HDM) induced allergic asthma later in life. Scientific insights associate altered gut bacteria composition in early life with increased allergy susceptibility. Human milk contains a large variety of non-digestible oligosaccharides (HMOS) known to support microbiota development and immune maturation, which may protect against allergy. HMOS inspired synthetic non-digestible oligosaccharides (sHMOS) are being developed to be added to a new generation formula milk for infants that cannot be breastfed. The current project is based on recent findings that dietary intervention with short-chain galacto- and long-chain fructo-oligosaccharides (GOS/lcFOS) can reduce allergy development in human and/or murine models of allergy. Novel types of sHMOS, are now available that may also contribute to allergy protection. In this PhD project these sHMOS will be studied in in vitro co-culture models of human intestinal or airway epithelial cells with immune cells and in vivo models of food allergy and HDM induced asthma, in order to gain insight in the immunomodulatory and allergy protective properties. These studies will help to reveal the biologic properties of these sHMOS and may open venues for future clinical testing in early life allergy prevention.