Nutrition and immuno-metabolism

Our research in nutrition and immuno-metabolism involves:

• food technologists exploring how to manipulate and improve food structure
• chemists and physicists studying which dietary metabolites affect our physiology
• microbiologists determining the impact of diet on gut health
• immunologists investigating the impact of diet on immune function and disease development in preclinical models
• clinicians and human nutritionists leading clinical trials.

We’re exploring affordable and safe ways to help people understand and achieve an optimum diet for good health.

A good diet is a safe and affordable way to keep us healthy, prevent disease and improve the effects of medicine – including reducing drug dosage and side effects.

Our research has lead to the creation of an interdisciplinary topic in the journal Frontiers in Immunology to identify how modern lifestyle environment and impact on health. This initiative is led by two node members (Macia and Nanan, who also leads the DOHAD node) in conjunction with an international collaborator Dr Galy.

Funding

We have developed strong interdisciplinary links between teams in nutrition, immunology, infection, gut microbiota and chemists in ANSTO. This has resulted in successful grants and funding, including:

• an ARC linkage grant and two successful NHMRC grants
• successful seed funding to apply for bigger schemes and ongoing application (ARC, NHMRC)
• co-funding of post-doctoral fellow between ANSTO and USyd

Publications

Our node has seven publications so far in journals including:

• Hu, M., Eviston, D., Hsu, P., Marino, E., Chidgey, A., Nanan, B., Wong, K., Richards, J., Yap, Y., Collier, F., Quinton, A., Joung, S., Peek, M., Benzie, R., Macia, L., Nanan, R., et al (2019). Decreased maternal serum acetate and impaired fetal thymic and regulatory T cell development in preeclampsia. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1-13.
• Simpson, S., Raubenheimer, D., Cogger, V., Macia, L., Solon-Biet, S., Le Couteur, D., George, J. (2018). The nutritional geometry of liver disease including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Journal of Hepatology, 68(2), 316-325.

• Associate Professor Laurence Macia (Project Node Leader)
• Professor David Raubenheimer
• Professor Ralph Nanan
• Associate Professor Andrew Holmes
• Professor Stephen Simpson
• Dr Alison Gosby
• Dr Mark Read

External

• Dr Tamim Darwish (ANSTO)
• Dr Marie-Claude Gregoire (ANSTO)
• Dr Fleur Ponton (Macquarie Univesrity)