It is now a globally accepted phenomenon that the only answer to developing Nutritional genomics is to work as a team.
José Ordovas, PhD, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University along with about than eighty other leading researchers in the fields of nutrition and genetics has co-authored a report outlining their strategy for maximizing the impact of nutrigenomics research on global poverty and health."Advancing our knowledge of diet-gene interactions is critical," says Ordovas, professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts, "but knowledge alone is not sufficient for us to effectively address health disparities and combat chronic disease throughout the world." A collaborative effort with scholars and policy makers is the answer.
As said in the paper, "In the spirit of creating a truly integrated research initiative in nutrigenomics, the interaction of partners from agriculture, food processing, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries with academic centres would accelerate technology development and dissemination of nutrigenomics information to the public."
Potential benefits include developing new diagnostic tests for adverse responses to food, identifying specific populations of people who have special nutrient needs, revealing previously undiscovered nutrient-gene interactions, improving current methods for dietary assessment, and assisting in creating more nutritious foods and formulations.
One of the first goals of the consortium is to promote ethical and culturally sensitive recruitment of study participants from diverse cultures. There should be no national or international boundaries for disseminating such kind of information and it should be a free pass for it to reach to interiors where it is needed the most.
