Clinical Nutrition & Disease Programming

This group is under the direction of Profª. Conceição Calhau and comprises a total of 8 integrated members, 10 PhD students and 2 other researchers as collaborators. It integrates researchers from basic and clinical sciences, mainly based on the Porto Faculty of Medicine and collaborating with several major hospitals (e.g. Hospital de São João, Centro Hospitalar do Porto and Hospitais Privados CUF).

The Clinical Nutrition and Disease Programming (G4 – ProNutri) is a multidisciplinary research group, with specific and complementary skills, aiming to identify the causal effects and disease progression mechanisms (particularly those where peri‑natal programming have a significant contribution), as well as to determine preventive and therapeutic targets, specifically in chronic diseases in which diet plays a key role (e.g. identify dietary factors able to modulate the bioavailability of food bioactive components).

These chronic diseases include some of the currently most important clinical and public health issues worldwide, namely obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. The group will focus on two main activities: research on nutrition and metabolic diseases in children and adolescents and design of clinical trials to evaluate the clinical value of several food industry technologies.

It is important to stress the collaboration with the food industry as a way to foster the economic and commercial impact in the community.

Integrated Members

Ana Meireles		António Guerra		Carla Rêgo		Conceição Calhau [PI]		Diana Silva

 

Diana Teixeira		Diogo Pestana		Elisa Keating		João Costa Leite		Júlio Rocha

 

Manuel Fontoura		Nuno Borges		Victor Viana

Other researchers

• Ana Isabel Gonçalves Faria
• Ana Manuela Onofre Meireles
• Carla Vanessa Dias Sarmento Correia de Sá
• Cláudia Sofia Fonseca Marques
• Inês Cristina de Oliveira Pinto
• Mariana Ferreira Couto
• Rosa Sofia Barreira de Almeida Leite