INFORM will bring together researchers and industries across gut microbiology, food science, nutrition, immune function, mood, stress and anxiety, health and disease, healthcare, clinical research, and sports science.
We will explore the potential of functional foods within these areas, helping maintain optimum health and enabling researchers, industrialists and policymakers to work together to tackle these challenges using a multidisciplinary approach to address issues, generate ideas, and research solutions to push forward this important research.
The Hub will provide support and funding for innovative collaboration projects with the view to developing novel ideas, approaches and platforms to progress research in this area and establish an expert network where members provide thought leadership on how probiotics, prebiotics, and plant stanols may improve mental well-being, sports performance, and recovery from exercise, stress, and illness.
Our primary focus surrounds recovery using the following tools:
- Prebiotics: foods to support the growth and activities of positive microorganisms already existing within us, ultimately leading to beneficial health effects
- Probiotics: microorganisms that, when consumed in high enough quantities, have a positive effect on health
- Plant stanols, mainly associated with lowering blood cholesterol, have recently been observed to impact the gut microbiota
Day to day operation of the INFORM Hub will be managed by the Core Team and governed by a Steering Committee.