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APC Microbiome Ireland secures funding for groundbreaking multinational research project on polyphenols and cognitive health
APC Microbiome Ireland, a world-leading Research Ireland Centre based at University College Cork, has been awarded over €900,000 for a multinational research project entitled ‘MAEVE: Microbiota mediated flavonoid metabolites for cognitive health’.
Overall funding for the project is almost €3 million through the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme, a tripartite R&D partnership between the United States of America (USA), Republic of Ireland (RoI) and Northern Ireland (NI), which aims to increase collaboration among researchers across the three jurisdictions.
APC’s Prof Catherine Stanton, a Senior Principal Research Officer in Teagasc and a Research Professor at UCC, is leading the project along with Prof Chris Gill, Ulster University and Prof Arpana Gupta, University of California Los Angeles. The value of the award across the regions is RoI: €908,996, NI: £459,256 and US: $1,563,756.
The proposal aims to test the hypothesis that a high dietary intake of polyphenols (PPs) by elderly subjects with enhanced Alzheimer’s disease risk would maintain healthier brain and cognitive functions as well as having beneficial gut microbiota effects. The potential impact of dietary PPs is proposed to be assessed using multiple approaches such as animal models, imaging, assessment of cognitive function and inflammatory status as well as profiling of the gut microbiome and its metabolites.
The funding agencies involved in today’s announcement are Research Ireland and the Health Research Board (HRB) in RoI, the Department for the Economy (DFE) and the Health & Social Care R&D Division (HSC R&D) in NI, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in USA.
Celine FitzGerald, Interim CEO of Research Ireland, said: “Research Ireland congratulates the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme award recipients - their innovative projects in the areas of healthcare and telecommunications will provide mutual benefit to societies and economies across all three jurisdictions. Strong international research partnerships are vital to address the global challenges of our time. Through this significant tri-partite investment, the US-Ireland R&D Partnership continues to support and encourage world-class, impactful and collaborative research projects between our countries.”
