Principal Investigators

Prof Karine Clement

Prof Karine Clément

Institution: INSERM

Tasks in the project: Karine Clément is the coordinator of the MetaCardis project and leader of WP3.

WP1 & WP3: Her team will contribute to the coordination, collection and phenotyping of various biological samples from patients with low-grade inflammation. These samples will include adipose tissue samples and studies will focus on immunohistochemistry, circulating cytokines and cell sorting for monocytes. The impact of faecal water on adipose cell biology in human cell models will also be examined. Her team will also contribute to bioinformatics analysis of lifestyle factors in terms of interaction with host biology. This will be completed in collaboration with Danone Research.

Prof Dominique Gauguier

Institution: INSERM

Tasks in the project:

WP2 (WP leader): Owing to his experience in rodent genomics and genetics, Dominique Gauguier will coordinate WP2 and carry out experimental studies and validation of the effects of gut microbiomes and associated metabolomic patterns on phenotypes relevant to cardiometabolic diseases in congenic strains. He will contribute to WP4 with human transcriptomic profiling (RNA sequencing).

Prof Serge Hercberg

Institution: INSERM

Tasks in the project:

WP3: selection of control group of French healthy subjects from the NutriNet-Santé Cohort, and matching to patients according to main socio-demographic and nutritional characteristics (age and gender, BMI). Biological samples (blood, urine and faeces) will be collected from the control group. A basic clinical assessment will also be carried out at the same time as samples are collected. Socio-demographic parameters, lifestyle habits and environmental risk factors will also be assessed. Participation is also envisaged in the optimisation and harmonisation of procedures for the characterisation of dietary intake and physical assessments. Comparisons of studied populations will also be made to the general population.

Dr Marc E Dumas

Institution: ICL

Tasks in the project:

WP1: Metabolic phenotyping of the patient cohorts.

WP2: Metabolic profiling and interactome-mapping on mammalian signalling pathways.

WP4: Metabolic phenotyping of patient cohorts and statistical assessment of “-omics” data.

Prof Oluf Pedersen

Institution: UCPH

Tasks in the project:

WP1 (WP-leader): Identifying gut microbiota species associated with CMD risk factors. The work includes recruitment of volunteers, measurements of insulin resistance, low-grade inflammation, dyslipidemia, impaired glucose regulation and environmental factors, and specific metabolomic-based biological markers.

WP3: Major contributions to physiological studies and biological sample biobanking with recruitment and phenotyping of a total of 575 Danish study participants including patients with acute coronary syndrome, chronic coronary sclerosis, chronic coronary sclerosis with heart failure, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes as well as healthy control subjects.

Prof Lars Køber

Prof Lars Kober

Institution: UCPH

Tasks in the project:

WP1: Identifying gut microbiota species associated with CMD risk factors. The work includes recruitment of volunteers, measurements of insulin resistance, low-grade inflammation, dyslipidemia, impaired glucose regulation and environmental factors, and specific metabolomic-based biological markers.

WP3: Construction of biobank and phenotype database including the sampling of blood monocytes, serum, plasma, faeces and urine from e.g. non-diabetic subjects with the WHO-defined metabolic syndrome, android obese individuals and morbidly obese, individuals before and after bariatric surgery, non-autoimmune type-2 diabetes patients and patients with first acute coronary syndrome.

Dr Peer Bork

Institution: EMBL

Tasks in the project:

WP5 (WP-leader): EMBL will set up a data hub to integrate patient data and heterogeneous -omics data. Tasks will also include coordination of the development of a gut-specific annotation framework, integration of existing data and newly generated data into the data hub, generation of metagenomic profiles, a contribution to the metabolic modelling strategies, and development of visualisation tools and methods for disease risk prediction and biomarker discovery.

Prof Fredrik Bäckhed

Fredrik Bäckhed

Institution: UGOT

Tasks in the project:

WP2: Performs studies with gnotobiotic mice to delineate the mechanisms by which the gut microbiota contributes to metabolic diseases.

Prof Jeroen Raes

Institution: VIB

Tasks in the project:

WP5: Tasks include a contribution to meta-omics data analysis and multi-omics data integration, patient stratification and discovery of biomarkers. The aim of the work is move towards mechanistic and ecosystem-wide understanding of microbiota shifts in conjunction with host processes and the development of prognostic tools.

Prof Fabrizio Andreelli

Institution: INSERM

Tasks in the project:

WP3: Prof Andreelli will contribute to recruitment, phenotyping and bio-sampling of the CMD patient cohort. Phenotyping will include the core phenotyping components (lifestyle, medical history, body composition, clinical parameters, biochemical, hormonal and metabolic parameters, and heart and vessels imaging) and more advanced phenotyping in selected subsamples of the cohort.

Prof Jean-Michel Oppert

Institution: APHP

Tasks in the project:

WP3: Prof Oppert will contribute to recruitment, phenotyping and biosampling of the CMD patient cohort. Phenotyping will include the core phenotyping components (lifestyle, medical history, body composition, clinical parameters, biochemical, hormonal and metabolic parameters, and heart and vessels imaging) and more advanced phenotyping in selected subsamples of the cohort.

WP8 (WP leader): Regulatory and ethical issues

Prof Michael Stumvoll

Institution: ULEI

Tasks in the project:

WP3: Recruitment of MetaCardis CMD patient cohort.

Prof Matthias Bluher

Institution: ULEI

Tasks in the project:

WP3: Recruitment of MetaCardis CMD patient cohort.

Dr Nicolas Gausserès

Dr Nicolas Gausseres

Institution: Danone Research

Tasks in the project:

WP1: Development of methods to measure and analyse the impact of dietary patterns on the association between gut microbiome and host CMD risk features.

WP3: The identification of relevant methods/tools (e.g. questionnaires) to obtain detailed information about health and lifestyle behaviour of study participants.

WP5: The identification of methods to help visualise dependence of both dietary and environmental patterns with both bacterial and serum metabolic profiles to determine CMD stages.

Read more: biography

Dr Douwina Bosscher

Institution: Cargill

Tasks in the project:

WP6: Cargill will support appropriate communication of project objectives and achievements to relevant industrial stakeholders. The company will support the consortium with its dissemination experience and channels, including the use of media agencies and industry focused communications, participation in food industry related events, interaction with trade associations and industry funded bodies, etc. Also, support and advice will be given in terms of handling of the intellectual property generated within the project.

Read more: biography

Prof Jens Nielsen

Institution: Chalmers University

Tasks in the project:

WP5: This task will involve setting up detailed metabolic models for the gut microbiota and combine these models with a model of the gut-system. The objective of this task is to simulate microbial-human interactions.

WP6: Involved in teaching a course and dissemination to industry and other researchers.

Read more: biography

Dr Catherine Clusel

Institution: INSERM-Transfert

Tasks in the project:

WP6: dissemination, training and exploitation of the foreground and management of intellectual property

WP7 (WP leader): assisting the coordinating institution for the legal and administrative management.

Read more: biography

Dr Ivica Letunic

Institution: Biobyte

Tasks in the project:

WP5: Data integration, functional modelling and data visualisation.